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http://www.archive.org/details/talkswithsocrateOOplatrich 


BY THE, SAME AUTHOR 


SocraTES: A Translation of the Apology, Crito, 
and parts of the Phaedo of Plato. Mew edition. 
16mo, Cloth, $1.00; paper, soc. 


A Day In ATHENS WITH SOCRATES, 12mo, 
Cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50c. 


TALKS WITH SOCRATES 


ABOUT LIFE 


TRANSLATIONS 
FROM 


THE GORGIAS AND THE REPUBLIC 


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NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1887 


Copyricut, 1886, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. 
LAL ZOOS 


The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 


) 


PREFACE. 


THE dialogue which occupies the larger part of this 
volume, although generally known by the name of the 
rhetorician Gorgias, sometimes bears the sub-title of 
Rhetoric. This latter may seem a_strange designation 


for a work the aim of which is nothing less than to dis- 


cover wherein happine r, what to Plato is a synony- 
mous term, The Good, consists. But, as his great master 
had broupht down, philosophy from the “world of pure 
thought ” to the daily haunts of men, — to the street, the 
market-place, the public Assembly ; so Plato deemed no’ 
subject so trivial that its relation to The Good might not 
profitably be ascertained, none so remote that it might 
not form a connecting link between men’s daily lives and 
the universal object which “every soul pursues, and for 
the sake of which it does all that it does.” Surely, 
then, the art which was more persistently and systemat- 
ically cultivated than any other by the Athenians of the 
time of Socrates and Plato is no inappropriate heading 
to this search after “the best way of life,” 

Chief among the causes contributing to the popularity 


of rhetoric or, as it has been defined, “(the power of dis- 


cerning every possible means of persuasion upon, every 
subject ”® was the recent establishment of dikasteries or, 
courts of justice, in which Jarge numbers of the | citizens 


eres ree 


2 Republic, 505 E. 2 Aristotle, ‘Rhet. i i. 2, p. 1355 b 26. 


iv PREFACE. 


were compelled to sit daily as jurymen. The necessity 
which was thus laid upon every Athenian to take an 
active interest in questions of law, and still more the 
innate love of litigation which rendered a summons be- 
fore a tribunal a matter of frequent occurrence, natu- 
rally predisposed the public mind to listen with favour 
to teachers who promised to impart “the faculty of per- 
suading judges in the courts of justice by means of 
words.” It is no mere figure of speech that Callicles 
uses when he tauntingly asserts that, if unprovided with 
the weapons of defence afforded by rhetoric, the ac- 
cused ‘would stand there with swimming head and open 
mouth, and with never a word to say; nay, would have 
to die if his accuser, however mean and low he were, 
chose that death should be the penalty.” 

Our information concerning the scope and nature of 
the art, one of whose most famous representatives we 
are about to meet, is chiefly derived from our _knowledge 
of the sophists, with whom, Plato tells us, the rhetori- 
cians were commonly identified. The very closeness of 
the relationship between rhetorician and sophist would 
seem, it is true, only to have enhanced the contempt 
in which each held the other. Callicles, for instance, 
though figuring here as the host and admirer of Gor- 
gias, speaks of the sophists ‘“‘as men of no account 
whatever ;” while the rhetorician Isocrates heaps upon 
them even fiercer invectives than those contained in 
the pages of Plato, their arch-enemy, as he is called by 
Grote. Nor were the sophists more measured in the 
contempt they expressed for the art which,, taking no 
cognizance either of theory or principle, con ned itself 
to one narrow aim, that of persuasion. Nevertheless, 
sophist and rhétérician were commonly held to be “the 


PREFACE. Vv 


same person considered under a different point of view,” 
and as such we shall for the present regard them. 

What, then, do we know of the teachers whose name 
has become a very synonym for specious reasoning, and 
to define whom, as Plato himself tells us, “involves great 
hardship and a dangerous chase”?+ The name itself 
must not be thought of as applicable to any distinct 
school of philosophy or system of thought. Grote, who 
may be regarded as the chief rehabilitator and champion © 
of the sophists, calls them the “ practical teachers of 
Athens,” and declares that unless we take into account 
all the existing circumstances “we cannot fairly estimate 
them face to face with their accuser-general, Plato. He 
was a great and systematic theorist. . .. Their direct 
business was with ethical precept, not with ethical the- 
ory; all that was required of them, as to the latter, was 
that their theory should be sufficiently sound to lead to 
such practical precepts as were accounted virtuous by 
the most estimable,society zz Athens, It ought never to 
be forgotten that those who taught for active life were 
bound, by the very conditions of their profession, to adapt 
themselves to the place and the society as it stood.” ? 

That the sophists were mere exponents of the average 
morality of the day is, however, one of the chief charges 
which Plato brings against them. He complains. that in- 
stead ¢ of leading they only echo the.opinions..of£.the..mul- 
titude. He compares them to the man who, adapting 
himself to the humour of some wild beast whom it is 
his duty to feed, has no notion of good and evil save 
from the fancies of the animal ;* he describes them as 
mercenary hunters of the young and wealthy, as traf 
fickers of the wares pertaining to the soul;* and casts 


1 Sophist, 218 D. 2 Grote’s Greece, vol. viii. chap. 67. 
3 Republic, 493 A. # Sophist, 231 D. 


Vi PREFACE. 


tidicule upon them as champions of the art of conten- 
tion in words ; as members of the money-making tribe of 
the art Eristic, which he calls the art disputatious, con- 
troversial, pugnacious, and contentious.’ And although 
the evidence of so prejudiced a witness as Plato ought 
not to be received as conclusive, it may not unfairly be 


- assumed that he does to some extent reflect the public 


opinion of his time. The blush, therefore, which it costs 
the young Hippocrates to declare his intention of joining 
the ranks of the sophists ;* the half defiant tone with 


which Protagoras proclaims his readiness to throw off 


thé mask hitherto worn by his predecessors and proclaim 


_ himself the sophist that he is ;* the assertion that they 


who are most powerful and esteemed are ashamed to 
write speeches because they fear that in after-times they 
may be called sophists ;* all this would seem to indicate 
that, although the fiend called “die Sophistik” dressed 
up, as Grote declares, by recent German historians, 


may be set down as purely a creature of the imagina- 


tion, the most prominent teachers of the day had never- 
theless come to be regarded with suspicion if not dis- 
trust by at least a portion of the community. 

The above allusion to the sophists as a “money-mak- 
ing tribe” may be regarded as significant of the differ- 
ence that existed between them and those who were stead- 
fastly “looking onward to the Truth.” It is not easy 
for us to conceive of the repugnance with which thought- 
ful men of that day regarded the association of emolu- 


ment with positions of honour and trust. If the recent 


innovation of paying the servants of the state, such as the 
dikasts and soldiery, had excited a storm of opposition. 
what must have been the feeling aroused on beholding 


1 Sophist, 231 E.;.226 A. 2 Protagoras, 312 A. 
8 Thid., 317 B. 4 Phaedrus, 257 D. 


PREFACE. ‘ vii 


what was regarded as the highest of human relationships 
—that existing between teacher and pupil— affected by 
questions of pecuniary gain! It has been well said that 
“the distinction between the sophists’ sale of knowledge 
for money and the free conversation of Socrates with all 
comers may not seem much in itself, but it is a type of 
the profound difference in the moral purpose of Socrates 
on the one hand, and of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Hip- 
pias on the other. To say that the sophists represented 
the average morality of Greece is not a defence; it is a 
condemnation. Those who come before the world as 
wise men and teachers ought to have something more 
than average morality to offer.” ? | 


_If, therefore, Plato’s view may be accepted, thatthe 
Office of teacher er tieaae ahd Gates the a 
to_gently draw it from out the barbaric slough in ‘which 
it has long lain buried, and lead it to look upward ;? to 
turn it from the shadowy illusions of sense to the Idea 
of Good which is the dispenser of truth and reason, and 
to point out the best way of life, it is plain that rheto- 
ric was still more unfitted than sophistry for this high 
function. ‘The one, at least in theory, recognised the 
necessity for a knowledge of principles, whereas it was © 
the boast ‘of the other that its faculty of assuming the 
appearance of every other art did away with any such 
necessity, thus proving conclusively that the one and only 
unmistakable reality is the power of humbug. “TI have 
heard, dear Socrates,’’ says Phaedrus, “that he who 
wishes to be a rhetorician has no need to learn what is 
the true nature of justice, but only what it appears to the 
crowd who sit in judgment ; nor what is the good and the 


1 “Grote’s Plato” in Sat. ote July 22, 1865. 
2 Republic, 533 D. 


Viil PREFACE. 


noble, but only what appears thus; for of this, not of 
Truth, is persuasion begotten.” * As we read these words 
we cannot but feel that they only too well describe cer- 
tain standards of our own day. Indeed, throughout the 
whole dialogue it is constantly brought home to us that, 
although the palmy days of oratory are over and a public 
of listeners has, with us, in great measure given place to 
one of readers, although, as Carlyle asserts, “the Jour- 
nalists are now the true Kings and Clergy,” there are still 
statesmen and teachers whose personal magnetism and 
fluent speech serve to screen corrupt principles and igno- 
ble aims. Theirs is the oratory of which Plato says that 
it is mere flattery and base clap-trap, used by pseudo- 
statesmen to gratify the humours of the populace, and to 
coax it into such blind compliance with their own will as 
shall enable them with impunity to abuse public trusts for 
purposes of private gain.” Such was the estimation in 
which Plato held the teachers whose promise to implant 
knowledge within the soul, “as if they would put sight 
into blind eyes,” is perhaps no unfit gauge of their own 
criterion of wisdom. 

Widely removed, however, from the counterfeit art 
here so scathingly denounced is the true one, concerning 
which we are told that “‘ without much hard work it can 
never be acquired, but must nevertheless be cultivated 
for the sake of speaking and acting, to please not men 
but God, and in all things to do, so far as may be, his 
pleasure.” *® It is to this “‘true art of rhetoric” that Soc- 
rates refers when he calls himself the only Athenian who 
practises statesmanship with a view not to gratify his 
fellow-citizens, but to change the bent of their desires, 
knowing well that unless he can implant virtue within 


1 Phaedrus, 260 A. 2 Gorgias, soz EE. § ® Phaedrus, 273 E. 


vw 


PREFACE. ix 


their souls he can give them no other good gift. Small 
wonder that men of this stamp, who are themselves freed 
from the delusions of sense, and who behold the realities’ 
of which the ignorant perceive only the shadows, have 
no desire to descend into the arena of public life. Small 
wonder that they would fain dwell in the “world of pure 
thought” did not a stern sense of duty compel them to 
bear their share in the toils of the state, and thus help 
men in the upward journey towards the Idea of Good typ- 
ified by “the sun, the lord of light.” It is because the 

_myth of the Cave,’ whence this simile is taken, so beauti- 
fully depicts the combat in which they must engage who 
would have “the eye of the soul turned to the light,” and 
because it so uncompromisingly points out the duty de- 
volving upon the best-endowed natures not to stand aloof 
from the struggle out of which they themselves have 
come victorious, that it has been given a place in the 
present volume as a fit conclusion to a search after “the 
best way of life.”’ 

It is time, however, that we turn from the subject- 
matter of our dialogue to the men who take part in it. 
In several of Plato’s works the main dialogue is intro- 
duced by a shorter one, in the same way that in the open- 

_ ing scene of a modern comedy some subordinate charac- 
ter puts us at once into relation with the action and the 
chief personages. But in the present instance we_are 
left_to_our-own—unaidedconjectures as to. time, place, 
and circumstances. From the absence of greetings be- 
tween the belated guests and the already assembled com- 
pany, among whom Gorgias is the chief figure, it is a 
matter of doubt whether these have already taken place 
before the opening remarks of Callicles, or whether we 


1 See p. 121. 


54 PREFACE. 


are to suppose some break in the dialogue during which 
they occur. The character of these remarks, however, 
forbidding, as it does, the possibility of their having been 
made within hearing of Gorgias, lends weight to the latter 
hypothesis. Whether the scene of action is to be thought 
of as in the house of Callicles or in some well-known 
place of public resort is open to conjecture. There are ob- 
stacles in the way of either supposition, but they are per- 
haps best reconciled by imagining that Callicles, coming 
by chance to the door of his house at the same moment 
that Socrates and his friend appear before it, holds a 
short conversation with them while he leads them into the 
presence of Gorgias, at which juncture the break would 
occur during which the greetings proper to the occasion 
are exchanged. 

Whatever the place of assemblage may have been, the 
audience which had been summoned by Gorgias to his 
“delectable feast”? was evidently a large and enthusi- 
astic one, to whose encouraging and untiring applause 
is perhaps due the continuation of the discussion at a 
moment when it seemed in danger of being abandoned. 
The eager group which at break of day Socrates and his 
friend Hippocrates found clustered round Protagoras? 
is matched by the no less enthusiastic listeners who, 
long after Gorgias has ended his previous oration, linger 
on the scene lest perchance they lose some word of wis- 
dom which may fall from his lips. Their attitude of un- 
questioning acquiescence is revealed by the complacent 
remark of Gorgias that it is a long time since any one 
has asked him anything new. Had these same listeners 
known what was now to be offered them in place of the 
rhetorical display which a short time before had held their 


1 Protag. 315 A. 


PREFACE. x1 


delighted attention ; had they foreseen that the art which, 
they would fain believe, combined all other arts within 
itself, was to be proved as stupid and useless as it was 
immoral, and the power it assured its followers shown to 
be a mere semblance of power capable of affording only a 
semblance of pleasure, —they would perhaps have looked 
forward with less eagerness to the coming discussion ; 
nay, they might even have exclaimed with Callicles that, 
if all this were true, this life of theirs was completely up- 
side down, and they had all their lives been doing the 
very opposite of what they ought. 

Those already familiar with the famous Protagoras, 
whose portrait is given in the dialogue bearing his name, 
may find it interesting to compare that noted sophist 
with this the most celebrated of the rhetoricians, whose 
oratorical gifts, displayed on various embassies from his 
own city of Leontini, had won him a reputation through- 
out Greece. Both may be taken as fair examples of the 
literary lions of the day, whom select Athenian coteries 
delighted to honour. The precise claims which these 
teachers put forth vary, of course, with their respective 
professions. Sophistry does not confine itself to mere tech- 
nical skill in speech, or even to that “judgment whereby 
aman becomes master of his own private affairs and of 
those of the public as well,” ? but includes the acquisition 
of virtue ; rhetoric, on the other hand, substitutes intellec- 
tual and moral qualities for the empty show of them 
which its own ingenuity affords. 

As the two men resemble one another in the vastness 
of their pretensions, so do they in their self-importance 
and assumption of superiority. It is easy to recognise 
in Gorgias the man who, as the story goes, delighted to 


1 Protag. 318 E. 


xii PREFACE. 


array himself in robes of purple and gold, and who 
caused a golden statue to be erected in his own honour 
at Delphi. Were it not for his childlike ingenuousness, 
his self-commendatory remarks, when contrasted with his 
inability to defend his own position against the attack 
of Socrates, might challenge a harsher judgment than is 
awarded him. But it is only with amused interest that 
we hear him exclaim, in answer to the question whether 
he is to be called a rhetorician, ‘‘ Ay, and a good one, 
too!” and mark the complacency with which, when his 
brevity of speech has called forth the applause of Soc- 
rates, he observes, “I really think I am fairly good at 
this.” And we note, with an indulgent smile, the amiable 
egotism and love of approbation, so skilfully played upon 
by the well-timed encouragement and encomiums of Soc- 
rates as to justify the subsequent reproach of Callicles 
that Gorgias was shamed into saying what was counter 
to his real beliefs out of deference to the general opin- 
ion of mankind. In truth, some such motive as this can 
alone have prompted the assent of Gorgias to the inti- 
mation of Socrates that the rhetorician must both know 
and teach moral truths ; for the opposite proposition, that 
“the rhetorician has nothing to do with truth,”’? accords 
far better with his celebrated assertion, that “ nothing 
exists ; or if it does we cannot know that it does; or if 
we did, we could not convey the knowledge thereof to 
others.” 

But whatever may be his convictions or want of con- 
victions, the manner of Gorgias is invariably characterised 
by a courtesy and good-breeding which contrast favour- 
ably with the behaviour of Protagoras under somewhat 
similar circumstances.? Although he has just ended a 


1 Phaedrus, 272 E. 2 Protag. 334-9; 348; 360. 


PREFACE. . xiii 


fatiguing discourse, he betrays no impatience or reluctance 
on being urged to repeat it for the benefit of his belated 
hearers. The cheerful serenity with which he meets the 
officious intrusion of Polus is no less remarkable than is 
his willing consent again to take up the interrupted con- 
versation. His wish might well have been not to continue 
an argument in which he must have foreseen that he 
would be worsted ; nevertheless, as in honour bound, he 
does not shrink from carrying out to the letter his prom- 
ise of talking with any one who desires. When at last 
he is fairly reduced to silence, far from maintaining a 
sulky dignity, he not only continues to follow the argu- 
ment with unabated interest, but, even when the conclu- 
sion bids fair to be no pleasing or flattering one, he urges 
Socrates not to refrain on his account from saying all 
that is in his mind. 

The unfailing deference and courtesy which marks the 
conduct of Socrates towards the excellent Gorgias is in 
striking contrast with his rough handling of Polus, his 
second opponent, whose inflated style of speech he does 
not hesitate to parody to his face. He makes no secret 
of his desire to exclude him from the conversation, — 
a vain attempt in view of the hopeless obtuseness with 
which Polus seizes every occasion to thrust himself into 
prominence. The logical inconsequence of this “ colt- 
ish” disciple of Gorgias is well illustrated by his remark 
when told that rhetoric is a counterfeit branch of the 
art of politics. ‘“ Well, what then,” he inquires, “do you 
mean that it is a fine thing ora base one?” — an ob- 
servation which calls forth the first and only discour- 
teous speech recorded of Gorgias, who straightway bids 
Socrates let Polus alone, and make clear to im the defi- 
nition which the other had not the wit even to recognise. 


Xiv PREFACE. 


It is plain that, although himself the author of a preten- 
tious essay, Polus has never used his own mind, but has 
merely adopted the catch-words of the school of shrewd 
self-interest to which he belongs. The contemptuous in- 
credulity with which he hears that pleasure is not the 
highest good betokens his incapacity to grasp an idea so 
opposed to the standards of this school; and only be- 
cause he is unable to maintain the contrary against the 
resistless logic of Socrates does he finally acknowledge 
that the gratification of ignoble and selfish desires is 
not the most honourable of standards. From assured 
self-complacency he passes to petulant impatience, from 
scornful derision to peevish exasperation, until he finally 
subsides into a condition of bewildered acquiescence, 
and, with the remark that “these are strange sayings,” 
drops out of the conversation and is heard of no more. 
His withdrawal gives an opening to Callicles, whom we 
may imagine to have been with difficulty restrained from 
bursting in upon the conversation, like Thrasymachus in 
the Republic, with whom, indeed, he has more than one 
point of resemblance. Although the superior in wealth, 
position, and family, as well as in intellectual calibre, of 
the pretentious bully whose only weapon is invective, 
he is on the same plane with him in point of unscrupu- 
lousness and unfairness. Having begun by asserting his 
“superiority to his predecessors on the score of tenacity 
| of opinion, he is not to be driven from his position by 
any proofs, however convincing. If forced into an un- 
willing concession, he pretends that he has made it out of 
pure condescension. Repeatedly does he attempt to di- 
vert the argument by accusing Socrates of ranting, of 
_ | hair-splitting, or of wilfully misunderstanding him; and 
when he is at last fairly driven to the wall, he turns the 


PREFACE. XV 


tables upon his opponent by pretending all along to have \ 
meant what only the latter’s dulness had failed to appre- / 
hend. For one moment, it is true, he seems to waver,/ 
nay, to be on the point of returning to his first vagué 
premonitions that he may all his life have been believin{ 
the reverse of what he ought, that the truth may lie be, 
yond the narrow horizon which embraces all his ken.) 
But the ‘love of Demus” has too fast a hold upon him, 
We leave him with the declaration upon his lips that to 
be the flatterer of the State is better than to be its bene} 
factor, and with the conviction strong within him that\ 
morality is only a set of rules which inferior men have 
contrived to impose upon those who are by the law si 
nature their masters. 

Last upon our list of characters is Chaerephon, known 
as one of the exiles from Athens during the rule of the 
Thirty, and also from the mention of him (in Charmides) 
as a “kind of madman,”? an epithet probably derived 
from the peculiar excitability of his temperament. He it 
is whose enthusiastic admiration of Socrates prompted 
the visit of inquiry to the shrine of Delphi, which resulted 
in the oracle that “‘none was wiser than Socrates.” A far 
from flattering description of his personal appearance is 
given by Aristophanes, who speaks of his “ pale face and 
slovenly attire,” and nicknames him, from the blackness 
of his eyebrows, “the Bat.” The part played by Chaere- 
phon in this conversation is important only because his 
solicitations have occasioned the delay which leads to the 
conversation before us. 

In the Socrates of this dialogue there are traces of 
the almost reckless humour which is remarkable in the 


1 See also Apology, 21 A. 


Xvi PREFACE. 


Protagoras. We recognise in him the prototype of what 
Carlyle calls the “ironic man, who, with his sly stillness 
and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young 
man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a 
pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and 
name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread 
such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, 
start ceiling high (da/kenhoch) and thence fall shattered 
and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without 
indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!” 
We behold here the “pitiless disputant, whose dreadful 
logic was always leisurely and sportive ; so careless and 
ignorant as to disarm the wariest and draw them in the 
pleasantest manner into horrible doubts and confusion. 
. . . Noescape; he drives them to terrible choices by his 
dilemmas, and tosses the Hippiases and Gorgiases with 
their grand reputations, as a boy tosses his balls. The 
tyrannous realist— Meno has discoursed a thousand 
times at length on virtue before many companies, and 
_ very well, as it appeared to him; but at this moment he 
cannot tell what it is, — this cramp-fish of a Socrates has 
so bewitched him.” ? 

It has been conjectured that Plato wrote these pages 
under stress of the intense feeling aroused by the re- 
cent trial and death of Socrates, and that his object was 
to vindicate his master’s fame, as well as to warn those 
who had wrought the deed that a far more formidable 
trial-scene awaited them. Nobler vindication there could 
hardly be than the words which seem to sum up the life 
of Socrates: “ Bidding farewell to those things which 
most men count honours, and looking onward to the x 


1 Emerson, Representative Men. 


PREFACE, * | & xvii 


Truth, I shall earnestly endeavour to grow so far as may 
be in goodness, and thus live, and thus, when the time 
comes, die.” 

But, probable as is the conjecture that the desire to 
vindicate his master was Plato’s chief inspiration, the sub- 
ject itself suffices to explain the deep current of earnest- 
ness which runs through the whole dialogue and betrays 
itself now and again in a passionate outburst of feeling. 
The theme he has chosen deals with questions “of no . 
slight import, but those which it is perhaps the noblest 
thing in the world rightly to understand ;” the conflict 
which he depicts is the old yet ever new warfare waged 

_. between the worlds of the Material and the Ideal; the 
one denying the existence of moral law, and refusing to 
see in standards of right and wrong anything beyond 

_ mere expediency and convention ; the other resting its 

_— faith upon that high instinct (or tia it not be more fitly 
-. called inspiration) which urges a man to be afraid not of 
death but of wrong-doing, and points out.to him “the 
way-.of-right-living,” by.walking in which each “ may-best 
live the time-he has yet to live” and so pass through 
the great combat of life that after death he may.“ present 
~his soul whole and undefiled.” 


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~GORGIAS. — 


GORGIAS. 


CHARACTERS OF THE DIALOGUE. 


Goreias of Leontini, a rhetorician. 

PoLus, a disciple of Gorgias. 

CALLICLES, an Athenian man of the world. 
SOCRATES. 

CHAEREPHON, a friend of Socrates. 


The scene is laid either in the house of CALLICLES, or in some public 
place of meeting. 


Callicles. A fit time this, Socrates, so they 
tell us, to come in for fight and fray! 

Socrates. What! Have we, as the saying 
goes, arrived the day after the feast and missed 
it ? 

C. And a delectable feast it was too; for 
only just now Gorgias was giving us many 
choice specimens of his art. 

S. Well, Callicles, it is all the fault of 
Chaerephon here; he would keep us lingering 
in the market-place. 

Chaerephon. Never mind, Socrates, I will 
make amends as well. Gorgias, you must 
know, is a friend of mine, so that he will give 
us another exhibition, at once if you like, or 
some other time if you prefer it. 

C. What is this, Chaerephon? Is Socrates 
eager to hear Gorgias? . 

Ch. To be sure; that is just what we are 
here for. 

C. Why then, you have only to come to my 
house ; for Gorgias is staying with me, and will 
give an exhibition for you there. 


448 


GORGIAS. 


S. A good suggestion, Callicles. But would 
he care to converse with us, do you think? 
What I want is to find out at first hand ex- 
actly what the man’s art amounts to, and what 
it is that he professes and teaches. As to the 
rest of his exhibition, he can, as you say, give 
that.some other time. 

C. Nothing like asking the man himself, 
Socrates! And, indeed, this was one part of 
his exhibition ; for just now he requested that 
any of those present should ask him whatever 
questions they liked, and promised that he would 
answer all. | 

S. That is capital. Do you, Chaerephon, 
ask him. 

Ch. What am I to ask? 

S. What he is. 

Ch. How do you mean? 

S. Why, suppose he had happened to be 
a maker of shoes by profession, he would have 
answered you, I suppose, that he was a cobbler. 
Do you not understand what I mean? 

Ch. 1 understand, and will ask him.2 Tell 
me, Gorgias, is Callicles here right when he 
says that you give out you will answer what 
ever question any one may ask you? 

G. Quite right, Chaerephon. That is just 
what I gave out 'a moment ago, and I may add . 
that in these many years no one has ever asked 
me anything new. 

Ch. Then, of course, Gorgias, it will be easy 
enough for you to answer. 


GORGIJAS. 3 


G. Youcan make trial of this, Chaerephon, 
if you like. 

Polus. To be sure; but upon me, Chaere- 
phon, if you please, for Gorgias seems to me 
quite tired out. He has just got through a 
long discourse, you know. 

Ch. What, Polus! Do you suppose you 
could answer better than Gorgias? 

P. And what has that to do with it, if I an- 
swer well enough for you ? 

Ch. Nothing; pray answer, if you wish to 
do so. 

P. Ask then. . 
Ch. Very well, I will. Suppose Gorgias 
had happened to be an adept in the art pro- 
fessed by his brother Herodicus,* what would 
it have been proper for us to call him? Just 

what we call his brother, would it not ? 

P. Of course. 

Ch. Then, if we had called him a physician, 
we should have spoken correctly. 

Fg 

Ch. And if he had been an adept in the art 
of Aristophon, the son of Aglaophon,‘ or his 
brother, what would it have been right to call 
him ? 

P. A painter, to be sure. 

Ch. Well then, in what art is he an aN 
and by what name therefore would it be right 
to call him ? 

P. Many, Chaerephon, are the arts Delia 


GORGIAS. 


ing to mankind which have been discovered ex- 
perimentally from experiences! for experience 
makes this life of ours to go on by system, in- 
experience by chance. Now in each one of 
these arts men severally in several ways bear 
their several parts; in the best arts the best 
men, of whom Gorgias here is one, and he has 
to do with the noblest of arts. 

S. So far as speech-making goes, Gorgias, 
Polus seems right well primed, but he certainly 
is not doing what he promised Chaerephon. 

G. How do you mean, Socrates? 

S. So far as I can see, he has not answered 
the question. 

G. Well then, question him yourself, if you 
like. 

S. No, not if you yourself are willing to 
answer. Nay, I had much rather it were you; 
- for, from the way Polus has been talking, I am 
quite sure that he has paid more attention to 
what goes by the name of rhetoric than to the 
art of dialectics.® : 

P. How so, Socrates? ye Camm t- 

S. Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asks 
you in what art Gorgias is an adept, you, fall to 
praising the art, just as if some one were find- 
ing fault with it; but you do not answer what 
it is. 

P. Why, did I not answer that it was the 
noblest one of all ? 

S. To be sure you did. But then no one 


449 


GORGJAS. 5 


was asking the nature of the art of Gorgias, 
but only what name it bears and what Gorgias 
himself ought to be called. Just as a while 
ago, when Chaerephon was putting his ques- 
tions, you answered him with such admirable 
brevity, so do you now answer and tell us what 


the art is and what we are to call Gorgias. Or, 


rather, Gorgias, do you tell us yourself what we 
are to call you: what art is it that you profess 
to be master of? 

G. The art of rhetoric, Socrates. 

S. So we are to call you a rhetorician, are 
we? | 

G. Anda good one, too, Socrates ; that is, 
if you wish to call me what, as Homer says, 
“T boast myself to be.” ? 

S.. Certainly I do. 

G. Call me this then. 

S. And we are to-say, are we not, that you 
are able to make rhetoricians out of other men 
also? 

G. That at least is what I profess, not only 
in this place, but elsewhere as well. 

S. And would you be willing, Gorgias, to 
go, on just as we are doing at present, now 
questioning, now answering, and to put off to 
some other time that diffuse style of talking 
which Polus started? Come, do not belie your 
promise, but consent to answer my questions 
briefly. 

G. There are some answers, Socrates, which 


GORGIAS. 


must of necessity be given at length. Not, 
however, but that I shall do my best to be 
brief ; for this is another of my claims, that no 
man can say any given thing more briefly than 
myself. 

S. Just what we want, Gorgias! Pray give 
us a specimen of this same brief style; the 
diffuse one we will have some other time. 

G. Iwill do so with pleasure, and you shall 
confess that you have never heard any one 
speak more briefly. 

S. Comethen! You profess to be an adept 
in the art of rhetoric, and to be able to make 
rhetoricians of other men. Now what are the 
things with which rhetoric has to do? As 
weaving, for instance, has to do with the mak- 
ing of garments, — has it not? 

G: Ves, 

S. And music, has not that to do with the 
composition of melodies ? 

Ge Yes. 

S. By Hera, ‘Gorgias, I admire your answers. 
You certainly are answering in the fewest pos- 
sible words. 

G. I really think, Socrates, that I am fairly 
good at this. 

S. And you are quite right. Come then, 
answer in the same way about rhetoric, and tell 
me what that is of which rhetoric is the sci- 
ence. 

G. Language. 


GORGIAS. 7 


[449 E-—452D_ Socrates here asks to be informed 
why every other art as well may not be styled 
“rhetoric,” inasmuch as every art, gymnastics, 
for instance, in treating of the body’s condition, 
or medicine, in prescribing remedies, necessarily 
employs the medium of language. 

“ Because,’ replies Gorgias, “ while other 
arts depend upon manual skill of some kind, 
rhetoric has to do with language exclusively.” 

“TI fear,’ remarks Socrates, “that I do not 
quite understand how you mean to classify it, 
but I dare say I shall have a clearer notion by 
and by.” 

He then points out that while in some arts, 
such as painting and sculpture, language plays 
but a small part, others there are, such as 
arithmetic and geometry, which, no less than 
rhetoric, are almost entirely dependent” upon 
language; insomuch that one disposed to be 
contentious might trip Gorgias up here, by. ex- 
claiming, “ And so, Gorgias, you call arithmetic 
rhetoric, do you?” 

It appears, therefore, that only by ascertain- 

. ing the object for which it uses language can 
the true definition of rhetoric be reached ; and 
what that object, or, in other words, what the 
subject matter of rhetoric is, its great champion 
is now called upon to declare. : 

Gorgias is ready with his answer : — 

“The greatest of human concerns, Socrates, 
and the best.” 


GORGIAS. 


“But here, too,’’ Socrates objects, “your 
statement is a questionable one, and not as yet 
clear. At many a banquet you must have 
heard that old drinking song® wherein health is 
ranked as the greatest treasure, next, beauty, 
and third, well-gotten riches.2 Now they who 
produce these three things— namely, the phy- 
sician, the trainer, and the money-maker — 
may be supposed to urge each his claim. ‘Soc- 
rates,’ the physician will say, ‘Gorgias is de- 
ceiving you; not his art, but mine it is which 
has to do with the greatest good of man; for 
what, I ask you, is there greater than health ?’ 
And the trainer, in his turn, thus: ‘I too, Soc- 
rates, should be amazed if Gorgias could show 
a greater good to be derived from his art than 
I from mine, the end whereof is beauty and 
physical strength.’: And after him the money- 
maker, with lofty superiority, I suspect, to all 
the rest, would come and say: ‘ Consider well, 
Socrates, whether it seems to you possible that 
either Gorgias or any other man should deem 
any treasure superier to wealth?’ And were 
you to maintain that your own art did bring 
about some greater good, the assertion would 
only bring upon you another question. Which 
question Socrates now proceeds to ask : —] 


S. Come now, Gorgias, imagine yourself to 
be questioned by these men as well as by my- 


a. 


(453 


GORGTJAS. 9 


self, and answer us what this thing is which 
you call man’s greatest blessing, and in which 
you claim to be a master-workman ? 

G. A thing, Socrates, which is in very truth 
the greatest blessing, and which gives men free- 
dom for themselves, and at the same time mas- 
tery over other men, each in his own city. 

S. And what, pray, do you call this thing ? 

G. I call it the faculty of persuading, by | 
means of words, judges in the courts of justice, | 
and senators in the Senate, and citizens in the 
Assembly or any other meeting of a political 
nature. I tell you that by means of this power 
you shall have as slave the physician, and as 
slave the trainer; nay, the very money-maker 
shall be seen making money not for himself but 
for another, —for you, namely, who have power 
to speak and win over the multitudes. 

S. Now, indeed, Gorgias, you have, I think, 
made it as plain as possible what kind of art you 
take rhetoric to be. You maintain, if I at all 
understand you, that rhetoric is the creator of 
persuasion ; that persuading, in fact, is its whole 
business, and that in this its crowning aim is 
fulfilled. Or can you maintain that rhetoric 
has power to do more than work persuasion in 
the souls of the listeners ? 

G. By no means, Socrates; to me this defini- 
tion of yours is quite satisfactory, for its crown- 
ing aim is just this. 

S. Listen then, Gorgias, to me. For you 


fe) GORGIJAS. 


may rest assured that if ever one man talked 
with another from a desire to get at the very 
heart of the question discussed, I — at least so I 
flatter myselfi—am one of that sort, and so I 
believe are you. 

G. Well, Socrates, what next ? 

S. Iwill tell you presently. In regard to 
this persuasion which comes from rhetoric — 
just what you mean by it, and about what 
things it is persuasive —I am, you must know, 
not quite certain ; although I confess I am not 
without a suspicion as to what you understand 
by it, and what the things themselves must be. 
But none the less shall I ask you what you 
do understand by the persuasion which comes 
from oratory, and what the things are to which 
it applies. But why, you may ask, when I have 
my own suspicion, should I question you at all, 
and not rather speak out myself? It is not out 
of consideration for you, but in order to help 
the argument and make it take such a course ° 
as will give us most light upon the subject we 
are discussing. 


[453 C—455 D Socrates justifies his present mode 
of procedure by arguing that just as upon hear- 
ing Zeuxis 1° spoken of as ¢he figure-painter we 
should forthwith inquire wherein his figures dif- 
fer from those of other figure-painters, so now, 
knowing that many arts besides rhetoric have 


GORG/AS. II 


to do with persuasion, it no less behooves us to 
discover the nature of the persuasion wrought 
by rhetoric. To which Gorgias promptly re- 
plies, that he refers to the persuasion exercised 
in the law courts as to what is just and what is 
unjust. This answer, however, does not touch 
the real point at issue, and Socrates now ap- 
proaches it from another side. 

“Do you take knowledge and belief,” he 
inquires, “to be one and the same thing? 
Surely not. For, were one to ask you, “Are 
there, Gorgias, such things as false belief and 
true belief?’ your answer would undoubtedly 
be in the affirmative ; whereas false knowledge, 
as all men know, is an impossibility. And yet 
they who have come to know and they who 
have come to believe are alike persuaded! 
Persuasion, then, is of two kinds, the one work- 
ing belief, the other knowledge; and that pro- 
duced by rhetoric is clearly of the former kind, 
since it were manifestly impossible in the short 
space allotted to a session of the Assembly to 
impart any real knowledge upon such a subject 
as the just and the unjust. Indeed, that such 
is the generally received opinion is seen from 
the fact that whenever choice has to be made 
of state physicians or generals or ship-builders, 
or master craftsmen of any kind, or whenever 
walls are to be built or harbours to be con- 
structed, it is not the rhetorician, but the man 
most skilled in the art or profession in question, 
who is called upon for advice.” 


12 


GORGIJAS. 


“But what,’ says Socrates in conclusion, 
“does Gorgias himself think about these mat- 
ters? For it is just that we should learn of 
them from one who not only calls himself a 
rhetorician, but is able to make rhetoricians of 
other men; and all the more since there are 
those among the audience who, though anxious 
to become his pupils, are ashamed to ask ques- 
tions for themselves. Let Gorgias, then, imag- 
ine himself to be confronted, in the person of 
Socrates, by the whole company when he is 
asked the question, ‘And what, Gorgias, shall 
we gain by becoming pupils of yours? On 
what civic affairs will you render us capable of 
offering advice ? Only those which concern 
justice and injustice, or those mentioned by 
Socrates as well?’” 

To this appeal Gorgias makes the following 


reply :—] 


G. Iwill certainly do my best, Socrates, to 
make clearly known to you the whole scope of 
oratory ; in fact you yourself have given me 
an excellent suggestion how I may do so. You 
are aware, I suppose, that the dockyards in 
question, and the walls of which the Athenians 
boast, and the construction of the harbours were 
due chiefly to the advice of Themistocles, partly 
also to that of Pericles, but not at all to that of 
the master craftsmen. 


GORGIAS. 13 


S. So it is commonly said, Gorgias, as re- 
gards Themistocles ; and as to Pericles, I my- 
self heard him when he advised us about the 
Middle Wall. 

456 G. And whenever a choice, Socrates, has to 
be made in the matters you have spoken of, it 
is, as you see yourself, the rhetoricians who ad- 
vise, and whose judgment, moreover, prevails. 

S. Yes, Gorgias, and it is because I won- 
dered at all this that I asked a good while ago 
what the art of oratory really amounts to. For 
when I look at it in this way, its extent seems 
to me something marvellous. 

G. Ah, but if you only knew everything 
about it, Socrates, — how it gathers up, as it 
were, and contains all the other arts in itself ! 
And of this I can give you a striking proof. 
Often before now I have been with my brother 
or with other physicians to visit some patient 
of theirs who refused either to take their med- 
icine or to submit to operation, whether by the 
knife or by cautery; and when the physician 
could find no way of persuading him, I have 
prevailed upon him solely by this art of rhet- 
oric. And I maintain that were a rhetorician 
and a physician to go together into any city 
you choose, and there, either in the Assembly 
or in some other public meeting, discuss the 
question which of the two should be elected 
physician, the physician would show for noth- 
ing, while he who had the gift of speech would 


14 


457 


GORGTJAS. 


carry the election if he had a*mind to it.” 
And if he were to enter into a contest with any 
expert whomsoever, the rhetorician could per- 
suade people, far better than the other, into 
electing him; for there is no subject upon which 
the rhetorician could not speak more persuasive- 
ly before the multitude than could any expert 
whosoever. Such, then, is the scope, and such 
the nature of the art. Nevertheless, Socrates, 
we must use rhetoric just like skill in any other 
exercise. For in other exercises no one man 
has a right to turn his strength against every 
other man just because he has so mastered 
the art of boxing and wrestling and using arms 
as to have both friend and foe at a disadvantage ; 
that is no reason why he should strike and stab 
his friends, — aye, and slay them too. Neither, 
by Zeus, if a man, who from frequenting the 
palaestra® has got his body into good fighting 
condition, were to strike his father or mother 
or any other of his kinsfolk or friends, would 
it be right on account of this to hate the train- 
ers and those who teach the art of fighting 
in armour, and banish them from our cities. 
For they gave their teaching that it might be 
rightly used in self-defence against the enemy 
and the wrong-doer, not in assault; but these 
other men pervert their strength and their art, 
and put them to-improper use. Not that the 
teachers are bad, nor is the art itself bad or to 
blame for all this; but they are to blame who 


GORGIAS. 15 


do not use it properly. Now the same thing 
applies to rhetoric. True enough, the rheto- 
rician has the power to hold his own against all 
men and upon all subjects, so as to have more 
influence than others with the multitude on 
any subject that he may choose. But none the 
more for this—that he coud do it— has he the 
right to take away the credit either of the phy- 
sician or of any other expert. No, indeed; he 
ought to use his rhetoric fairly, just as he does 
skill in other exercises. And it seems to me 
that if, after becoming a rhetorician, he puts 
this power and the art itself to an unjust use, it 
is not the teacher who ought to be hated and 
banished from the city. For he imparted the 
art to be used for justice, but the other uses it 
contrariwise. Wherefore the man who misuses 
it is the one to be hated and cast out and put 
to death, not he who taught it. 

S. I suppose, Gorgias, that you, like myself, 
have had much experience in discussions, and 
have noticed this peculiarity of them, that the 
disputants do not find it easy to define for each 
other’s benefit the subjects they may have un- 
dertaken to discuss, and thus to bring the con: 
versation to an end, feeling that they have 
mutually received and imparted knowledge. In- 
stead of this, if they happen to be at issue 
upon a certain point and the one says that 
the other speaks incorrectly or obscurely, they 
get angry, and each imagines that the other is 


16 


458 


GORG/JAS. 


speaking out of jealousy, in a spirit of disputa- 
tion, not seeking out the gist of the matter. 
And some there are who end by bringing 
things to a most disgraceful pass, reviling and 
calling one another such names that those pres- 
ent are vexed with themselves that they ever 
thought such men worth listening to. Do you 
ask why I say all this? Because it strikes me 
that what you now say does not agree or har- 
monize very well with what you said at first 
about rhetoric. But I am afraid to refute you, 
lest you suspect me of talking, not out of eager- 
ness to have the matter made clear, but out of 
spite to you. Now, if you are a man of the 
same sort as myself, I should much like to 
cross-question you; if not, I should prefer to 
let you alone. Of what sort am I, do you ask? 
One of those glad to be refuted if I say what is 
not true, and glad to refute another if he should 
say what is not true; and no less glad, I assure 
you, to be refuted than to refute, since this I 
believe to be a greater good in just the same 
degree that it isa greater good to be set free 
one’s self from the greatest evil than to set an- 
other free. For I believe that there is no evil 
so great for a man as to hold false opinions 
upon the questions with which our argument 
has to do. If this, therefore, is the sort of man 
you call yourself, we will go on talking. But if 
you think best to break off here, we will do so 
forthwith, and make an end of the discussion. 


GORGIAS. 17 


G. On the contrary, Socrates, I too claim 
to be a man of the sort you describe. I sup- 
pose, however, we ought to bear in mind the 
wishes of the company. For, a while ago, be- 
fore you came in, I had been discoursing to 
them at some length; and if we carry on the 
discussion now, we shall very likely prolong it 
unduly. We must, therefore, consider their 
wishes, lest we detain them from some thing 
else they may want to be doing. 

Ch. The applause of your audience, Gorgias 
and Socrates, which you hear for yourselves, 
shows how eager they are to listen to whatever 
you may have to say; and for my own part, 
Heaven forbid that I should ever be in such 
want of leisure as to give up a discussion of 
this kind, and upon such a subject, because 
something else was more pressing. 

C. True, by the gods, Chaerephon! Why, 
even I myself, although of course I have been 
present at many a discussion ere now, doubt if 
I was ever so delighted before ; so that, if you 
will only consent to go on talking all day long, 
I for my part shall take it as a favour. 

S. I assure you, Callicles, that, so far as I 
am concerned, there is nothing to prevent, if 
only Gorgias will consent. 

G. After all this, Socrates, it would be a 
disgrace for me not to consent, especially after 
I myself have given out that I will answer what- 
ever any one wishes to ask. Pray, then, if the 


18 GORGIAS. 


company so desire, open the discussion and ask 
whatever question you please. 


[458 E—460 E Courteously imputing a certain in- 
consistency in the statements of Gorgias, to 
which attention is to be called, to some mis- 
apprehension on his own part, Socrates first 

_asks whether he would really maintain that the 
rhetorician need be conversant with no art 
whatever, since he can always persuade the 
ignorant that he himself knows more than 
any expert. “Yes, Socrates,” Gorgias replies, 
“and is it not a great saving of trouble, if, 
after learning this one art and no other, a man 
may find himself at no disadvantage compared 
with those who have mastered other arts?” 

With the remark that the question of ad- 
vantage or disadvantage will more properly 
come in at another stage of the argument, Soc- 
rates proceeds to inquire, whether this assertion 
respecting the arts may be held to be true of 
moral qualities as well, or whether a man must 
on the contrary acquire a knowledge of jus- 
tice and injustice before he can become a rhet- 
orician. The latter alternative is accepted by 
Gorgias, who does not attempt to gainsay the 
deduction immediately drawn from ‘it, that just 
as the man who has learned music has become 
a musician and he who has studied medicine a 
physician, so he who has learned justice has 


GORG/AS. 19 


become a just man and as such is incapable of 
acting unjustly.’ This too ready compliance 
on the part of Gorgias enables his opponent to 
prove the inconsistency above alluded to, which 
he proceeds to do as follows : —] 


S. From what you said on the subject, I 
supposed at the time that rhetoric, which is 
forever discoursing of justice, could not pos- 
sibly itself be an unjust thing; so that, when 
you stated a little while afterwards that the 
rhetorician might possibly use his art unjustly, 
I was struck with amazement, and, thinking 

461 that the two statements did not chime together, 
made the remark that if, like myself, you held 
it a gain to be refuted, it was worth while to 
go on with our discussion ; if not, it would be 
better to give it up. But having come since 
then to look into the matter anew, we are now 
agreed, as you yourself see, that the rhetorician 
is incapable of using his art unjustly or being 
willing to commit injustice. By the dog, Gor- 
gias, it will take no little talking to investigate 
all this thoroughly. 

P. What, Socrates, do you really believe 
that all you are now saying about rhetoric is 
true? Do you not rather suppose that Gorgias 
was ashamed not to grant you that the rheto- 
rician must needs have a knowledge of the just 
and the beautiful and the good, and that if any 


20 


GORGIAS. 


one comes to him lacking this knowledge he 
himself will impart it; and that it is perhaps in 
consequence of this admission of his that some 
little contradictions have occurred? But you, 
of course, are delighted, having yourself led us 
into this kind of questioning. Why, who do 
you suppose would ever deny that he under- 
stands justice himself and is ready to impart it 
to others? But it is very ill-mannered of you 
to lead up to a discussion of this kind at all. 

S. Nay, but, Polus, my good friend, we get 
for ourselves friends and children on purpose 
that, when we grow older and make missteps, 
you younger ones may be at hand to set us 
again in the right course, as to both words and 
deeds. So now, if Gorgias and myself are 
making any misstep in our argument, do you, 
pray, be at hand to set us right again; for this 
you are bound todo. And if it seems to you 
that any one of these admissions has not been 
properly made, I am ready to let you take back 
whichever you please, if you will only do me 


' the favour to be careful about one thing. 


P. And what is that ? 

S. To keep within bounds, Polus, the long- 
winded style which you undertook to use at 
first. 

P. What! Am I not at liberty to say as 
much as I please ? 

S. Truly, my excellent friend, you would be 
badly off indeed if you had come to Athens, 


462 


GORGIAS. 21 


where in all Greece there is greatest liberty of 


speech, and there found that you were the only 
man to fail of it. But just reverse matters. 
Suppose you go on talking at length and refus- 
ing to answer questions, should not I in my turn 
be badly off unless I were at liberty to go away 
and not listen to you? Nay, if you care any- 
thing at all for the argument in which we have 
been engaged, and wish to have it set straight 
again, take back, as I said before, whatever you 
see fit; and then in your turn, like Gorgias 
and myself, proceed to question and answer, 
and so refute or be refuted. For I suppose you 
profess the same art with Gorgias, do you not ? 

Peddie? 

S. Do you, too, then, make the request that 
any one at any time will ask you any question 
he likes, seeing that you know how to answer ? 

P. Yes, to be sure. 

S. Then do now whichever of the two you 
prefer, — question or answer. 

P. Very well, I will; and do you, Socrates, 
answer me. Since you think that Gorgias is 
at a loss how to define rhetoric, tell us yourself 
what it is. 

S. Are you asking me what art I take it to 
be? 

P. Tam. 

S. No art at all, Polus, in my opinion, if I 
must tell you the truth. 

f. What, then, do you take rhetoric to be? 


22 


GORGIJAS. 


S. A thing which, as you maintain in the 
treatise of yours which I was reading lately, 
has created art. 

P. What do you understand by it ? 

S. In my opinion it is a kind of dexterity. 

P. What! you look upon rhetoric as a mat- 
ter of dexterity ! ” 

S. Ido, unless you have another name for 
it. ani is 

P. Dexterity in what? 

S. In the production of a certain gratifica- 
tion and pleasure. 

P. Well, if rhetoric is able to gratify men, 
do you not think it a fine thing ? 

S. How is this, Polus? Have you already | 
found out from me what I call it, that you go 
on to ask whether I do not think it a fine thing? 

P. Have I not found out that you call ita 
kind of dexterity ? 

S. Tell me, since you prize affording grati- 
fication so highly, are you willing to gratify me 
in a mere trifle? 

P. Certainly. 

S. Ask me, pray, what sort of an art I take 
fancy cookery to be. 

P. Well, I ask you, what sort of an art is 
fancy cookery ? 

S. No art at all, Polus. © 

P,. What is it, then? Pray tell us. 

S. Yes, I will tell you; a kind cf dexterity. 

f. Inwhat? Tell me that. 


463 


GORGIJAS. 23 


S. Certainly I will. In the production of 
gratification and pleasure. 

P. Fancy cookery, then, and rhetoric are 
the same, are they? 

S. Oh, no, indeed; but branches of the 
same pursuit. / 

P. Of what pursuit do you mean ? 

S. Iam afraid it may be somewhat discour- 
teous to declare the “truth ; in fact, I hesitate 
to speak on account of Gorgias, lest he imagine 
that I am turning his own pursuit into ridicule. 
For my part I really do not know whether or 
not this is the rhetoric which Gorgias practises, 
as what was said just now has not shown us 
clearly what he thinks about it; but the thing 
I call rhetoric is a branch of something which 
certainly cannot be styled “fine.” 

G. What is it, Socrates? Pray speak out, 
and do not let me embarrass you. 

S. Well then, Gorgias, I look upon it as a 
pursuit which has nothing to do with art, but 
requires merely a bold, shrewd mind, clever at 
getting on with men; and the sum total of it 
I call flattery. Of this pursuit there are, I 
hold, many branches besides, one of these being 
fancy cookery, which bears indeed the sem- 
blance of an art, but in my opinion is no art at 
all, but a mere matter of dexterity and routine. 
Rhetoric, too, I call a branch of the same, and 
likewise personal adornment and sophistry, — 
these four branches corresponding to four 


24 


GORGTAS. 


classes of actual things. Now if Polus wishes 
to find out my opinion, let him set about it at 
once; for as yet he has not found out which 
branch of flattery I pronounce rhetoric to be, 
but, without noticing that I have not yet given 
him an answer, he goes on to ask if I do not 
think it a fine thing. But I shall not tell him 
whether I look upon rhetoric as a fine thing or 
a base one, until I have first answered what it 
is; for that, Polus, would not be right. No; if 
you wish to find out my opinion, you must ask 
me which branch of flattery I pronounce rhet- 
oric to be. 

P. Very well; Iask now, and do you an- 
swer, — which branch is it ? 

S. Will you know any better, I wonder, af- 
ter I have answered? For, in my opinion, rhet- 
oric is a counterfeit of a branch of the political 
art.#9 | 

P. Well, what then? Do you mean that it 
is a fine thing, or a base one? 

S. To my mind, a base one. For bad things 
I call base, since I am to answer you with the 
understanding that you already know what I 
mean. 

G. By Zeus, Socrates, I really do not myself 
understand what you mean. 

S. Very likely, Gorgias, for I have not as 
yet made my point clear; but Polus here is so 
young and coltish.” 

G. Well, let him alone, and tell me what 


GORGIAS. 25 


you mean by saying that rhetoric is the coun- 
terfeit of a branch of the political art. 

S. Very well, I will try to tell you what rhet- 
oric seems to me to be; and if it is not as I say, 
Polus here shall refute me. 


[464 A-465E Gorgias readily admits that a right 
condition, whether of body or of soul, may be so 
skilfully counterfeited as to deceive any save an 
expert. Such a result flattery contrives to bring 
about in the following manner. The art called 
political, which provides for the soul’s interests, 
and the art which has charge of the body, have 
each alike two divisions, consisting in the latter 
case of gymnastics and medicine, in the former 
of legislation and justice. Now, flattery, being, 
as aforesaid, no art at all, cares not a whit for 
the welfare of either soul or body. But, though 
devoid of any knowledge of principles, and 
though aiming solely at bringing foolish men 
under her spell through the bait of pleasure, 
she has the shrewdness to assume the likeness 
of the arts above-mentioned. So successfully, 
for instance, does fancy cookery, one branch of 
flattery, feign a knowledge of the food best for 
the body, that were the fancy cook and the phy- 
sician to present themselves for election before 
a tribunal of boys, or men as foolish as boys, the 
physician, for all the encouragement he would 
receive, might die of want; and each of the 


26 


GORGIAS. 


other arts has in like manner its own counter- 
feit. Thus, to state the thing mathematically, 
as personal adornment is to gymnastics so is 
sophistry to legislation, and as fancy cookery is 
to medicine so is rhetoric to justice. 

Here Socrates pauses to point out that, al- 
though the relative positions of rhetoric and 
sophistry are in reality such as he has asserted, 
yet so closely related are the two that they are 
very commonly confounded even by those who 
profess them.”4_ Taking up the simile again, he 
declares that had the body, not the soul, been 
deputed to judge upon all questions of food 
and medicine, and had our sole standard been 
one of mere bodily delight, the saying of An- 
axagoras would undoubtedly long since have 
come to pass, and all things relating to medi- 
cine, health and cookery would ere now have 
become entangled in one indistinguishable and 
inextricable mass. He then closes with the 
following apology :—] 


S. And now, I dare say I have been incon- 
sistent, in that, while I would not allow you 
to talk at length, I myself have made a long 
speech. However, I deserve to be excused, in- 
asmuch as when I spoke in few words you were 
unable to understand, nor were you able to 
make anything out of the answer I gave you, 
but you needed to have it explained. If I, 


GORGJAS. 27 


therefore, in my turn can make nothing out of 

466 your answers, you in your turn must speak at 
length; but if I can, you must let me, for this 
is only fair. So now if you can make anything 
out of the answer in question, pray do so. 

P. Well, what is it you say? That you 
look upon rhetoric as the same with flattery ? 

S. I said it was a dvanch of flattery. But 
how is it, Polus, that at your age you do not re- 

“member? What will you do by and by? 

/. You think then, do you, that in our 
cities the good rhetoricians, being regarded as 
flatterers, are held in low esteem ? 

S. Is this a question you are asking, or is it 
a beginning of a speech? 

P. A question, to be sure. 

S. They are not esteemed at all; at least, 
so it seems to me. 

P. How not esteemed? Is it not they who 
are most powerful in our cities? 

S. Not if you call power a good thing for 
the man who possesses it. 

P. Most certainly I call it so. 

S. Then to my mind, of all men in the com- 
munity, the rhetoricians have least power. 

P. What! Is it not true of them, as of the 
tyrants, that they can put to death any man 
they please, or rob him of his possessions, or 
turn him out of our cities, if they see fit ? 

S. By the dog, Polus, with every statement 
you make, I am in doubt whether you are 


28 


GORGIAS. 


speaking for yourself and setting forth your 
own opinions, or whether you are asking mea 
question. | 

P. Iam asking you a question, of course. 

S. Very good, my friend. But why do you 
ask me two questions together ? 

P. How two? 

S. Did you not say something just now to 
the effect that the rhetoricians, like the ty- 
rants, put to death any man they please, or rob 
him of his possessions, or drive him out of our 
cities, if they see fit ? 

PT did. 

S. Well, I tell you that these are two ques- 
tions, both of which I shall answer you. . First 
of all, Polus, I maintain, as I said just now, that 
the rhetoricians and the tyrants have the least 
possible power in the community, for they do 
nothing, so to speak, that they would, though 
they do, to be sure, whatever they think best. 

P. And is not this having great power? 

S. No; at least, so says Polus. 

P. Isay no? I say yes, I tell you. 

S. Not you, by ,4 since you maintain 
that great power is a good thing for him who 
has it. 

P. Of course I maintain it. 

S. And do you look upon it asa good 


_ thing, if a man who has no sense may do what- 


ever suits his own pleasure; and do you call 
this having great power ? 


GORGIAS. 29 


P. No, I do not. 
S. Prove to me, then, that the rhetoricians 
467 are men of sense, and that rhetoric is an art, 
not a flattery, and you will have refuted me. 
But if you let me go unrefuted, it will then 
appear that this is no good thing which is pos- 
sessed by the rhetoricians, those who do what- 
ever they please in our cities, and by the ty- 
rants; that is, if power, as you maintain, is a 
good thing, and doing what one pleases, with- 
out understanding, an evil one, as you admit it 
is, —do you not? 

P. Ido. 

S. How, then, could rhetoricians or tyrants 
possibly have great power in our cities, unless, 
indeed, Socrates were to be refuted by Polus. 
and made to confess that they do what they 
would ? 

P. This fellow — 

S. I deny that they do what they would ; 
now refute me, if you can. 

P. Have you not just admitted that they do 
what they think best ? 

S. Yes, and I admit it now. 

P. Why, then, they do what they would. 

S. That I deny. 

P. But they do what they thinks best? 

S. That I admit. 

P. You are talking, Socrates, in a reckless 
and most extraordinary fashion. 

S. Do not accuse me, most polished Polus,* 


hy, 


30 


GORGIAS. 


if I may address you after your own style. If 
you know how to question me, prove me in the 
wrong ; if not, answer yourself. 

P,. Jam very glad indeed to answer, in the 
hope of finding out what you mean. 


[467 C-468 C_ Byaseries of questionings, Socrates 


soon gets Polus to recognize three classes of 
things, two of which may be called positive, 
comprehending all things good or evil, such as 
health, riches, wisdom, and their opposites ; 
while the third is neutral, including every ac- 
tion which, being neither good nor bad in it- 
self, is undertaken solely for the sake of some 
benefit expected to accrue therefrom. Such are 
the acts of sitting, walking, running, and sail- 
ing ; such also is medicine, the object of which 
is health, or traffic engaged in with the expect- 
ancy of gain. In like manner we cause a man 
to be put to death or sent into exile or de- 
spoiled of his possessions, only when we expect 
to derive some benefit through the injury we 
have inflicted upon him. Here Polus, begin- 
ning to see the drift of the questions which 
he has unsuspectingly answered, tries to avoid 


the inevitable conclusion, that men desire the 


good alone, and not the evil or even the merely 
neutral. Socrates, however, will not thus be 
turned aside, but demands a direct reply. ] 


GORGIAS. — 31 


S. Does what I am saying, Polus, seem to 
you true or not? Why do you not answer ? 

PP, Bate. 

S. Well, this being admitted, suppose some 
man, either a tyrant or a rhetorician, puts an- 
other to death, or casts him out of the city, or 
despoils him of his possessions, under the im- 
pression that this is for his own advantage, 
when it is really to his injury, he is undoubtedly 
doing what he sees fit, is he not ? 

Peres. 

S. But is it also what he would, if it happens 
to be to his own injury? Why do you not an- 
swer? 

P. Well, no, he does not seem to me to be 
doing what he would. 

S. And can a man of this sort possibly 
have great power in the city we spoke of, if 
great power is a good, as by your own admis- 
sion it is? 

P. No, he cannot. 

S. So I spoke truly when I said that it is 
possible for a man to do what he sees fit in a 
city, and at the same time neither have great 
power nor do what he would. 

P. Just as if you yourself, Socrates, would 
not prefer to have liberty to do what you please 
in the city rather than otherwise, and are not 
envious of a man when you see that he has put 
to death or deprived of his property or sent to 
prison a man whom he sees fit to injure! 


32 GORGIAS. 


S. Justly, do you mean, or unjustly ? 

469 ¥&. Whichever way he does it, is he not to 
be envied in either case ? 

S. Hush, Polus. 

P. And why, pray? 

S. Because we ought not to envy the unen- 
viable or the wretched, but pity them. 

P. What! do you think that it is thus with 
the men I speak of ? 

S. How can it be otherwise? 

P. And so, whoever puts to death any one 
he sees fit, and does it justly, seems to youa 
wretched and pitiable object ? 

S. Nay, not that, but certainly not to be 
envied. 

P. But did you not say just now that he was 
wretched ? 

S. Yes, my friend, if he has put any one to 
death unjustly, in which case he is pitiable as 
well; but he who has done it justly is not to be 
envied either. 

P. Isuppose you at least admit that the man 
who is unjustly put to death is wretched and pit- 
iable. 

S. Less so than he who puts him to death, 
Polus, and less so than he who is put to death 
justly. 

P. How do you make that out, Socrates ? 

S. In this way, that to commit injustice is 
the greatest of evils. 

P. What, this the greatest! Is not to suf- 
fer injustice a greater? 


GORGIAS. 33 


S. By no means. 

P. And you would wish to suffer an injus- 
tice rather than to inflict it ? 

S. I should wzsk neither; but if I must 
needs either commit or suffer injustice, I should 
choose rather to suffer than to commit it. 

FP. And you would not be a tyrant if you 
could ? 

S. No, if by being a tyrant you mean what 
I do. 

P. I mean by it just what I said before: be- 
ing at liberty to do whatever one sees fit in the 
state, to put men to death and send them into — 
exile, and to do exactly what one has a mind 
to do. 

S. And now, esteemed sir, let me say my 
say, and then do you attack it. Suppose that 
I should appear in the midst of the crowded 
market-place, with a dagger concealed under my 
arm,” and thus address you: “ Polus, but this 
moment there has come upon me a strange sort 
of tyrannic power. Know, if it be my good plea- 
sure that any one of these men whom you see be- 
fore you die on the instant, die he shall, no mat- 
ter who he may be. And if it please me that 
one of them have his head broken, broken it 
shall straightway be; or that he have his cloak 
rent asunder, forthwith it shall be rent. So vast 
is my power in this city.” And if, seeing you 
incredulous, I were to show you the dagger, 
you would very likely say when you saw it: 


34 


470 


GORGIAS. 


“Aye, Socrates, in this manner every one 
might have great power; for after such fashion 
you might burn any house you saw fit, and 
even the dockyards of Athens, and the galleys, 
and all the shipping, both public and private.” 
But after all, Polus, this is not having great 
power, simply to do whatever one sees fit, do 
you think it is ? 

P. No, at least not after this fashion. 

S. And can you explain what fault you have 
to find with this kind of power? 

P. That I can. 

S. Well, what is it? Tell me. 


_.£. Because any man behaving thus would 


inevitably be punished. 

S. And it is a bad thing to be punished, is 
it not ? 

P. Very bad. 

S. And so, esteemed sir, you have come 
back to your former opinion, that only when do- 
ing what one sees fit is coupled with doing what 


_is for one’s advantage is it good to have great 


- power, and that this, apparently, is what great 


power consists in, since power without this is 
but weak and harmful. But let us look at it in 
this way also. We are agreed, I believe, that it 
is sometimes better to do what we have just 
said, — put men to death, or banish them from 
our cities, or seize upon their property, — and 
sometimes not. 


P. To be sure. 


GORGIAS. 35 


S. So far then, it seems, you and I are 
agreed. 

Sel MES: 

S. And when do you call it better to do 
these things? Tell me where you draw the 
line. 

P. Here, Socrates, you had better do the 
answering and the questioning as well. 

S. Very good, Polus, since you prefer listen- 
ing tome. I call it better when these things 
are done justly, and worse when they are done 
unjustly. ns 

P. Truly, Socrates, it is a hard matter to re- 
fute you! Why, could not even a child convict 
you here of not speaking the truth? 

S. In that case I shall be very grateful to 
the child, and equally so to you, if you will re- 
fute me and set me free from my folly. Pray, 
then, do not weary of doing a friend a good 
turn, but refute me. 

P. Well, indeed, Socrates, there is no need 
to bring up old-time events wherewith to refute 
you, for those that happened only the other 
day are quite sufficient to refute you, and 
to prove that many men who act unjustly are 
happy. 

S. What events do you mean? 

P. You see, I suppose, that this Arche- 
laus, the son of Perdiccas, ** is now ruling over 
Macedonia ? 

S. If not that, at least I hear it. 


36. 


4 at 


GORGTAS. 


P. Well, do you look upon him as happy or. 
miserable ? 

S. Ido not know, Polus, for as yet I Bete 
had no intercourse with the man. 

P. What! Must you needs learn it from ac- 
tual intercourse with him, and do you not know, 
from the nature of the case, that he is happy ? 

S. By Zeus, I certainly do not. 

f. Then it is plain, Socrates, that you will 
soon be saying you do not £zow that even the 
great king himself is happy. 

S. And I shall be speaking the truth, for I 
do not know anything about his moral charac- 
ter or his training. 

P. Why, does all happiness lie in this ? 

S. That is what I maintain, Polus. The man 
or woman * who is good and true I call happy, 
the base and unjust I call miserable. 

Pf. This same Archelaus is miserable, then, 
in your opinion, is he? 

S. If he is wicked, my friend, yes. 

P. And what can he be called if not un- 
just? Why, the kingdom which he is now rul- 
ing did not belong to him at all, since he was 
born of a slave-woman of Alcetas, the brother 
of Perdiccas, and was by right the slave of Al- 
cetas, so that had he desired to do that which is 
right he would have served Alcetas and been 
happy according to your notion. But as it is, 
he must be passing wretched, for he is guilty 
of the greatest crimes. The first thing he did 


GORGIAS. 37 


was to summon this very master and uncle of 
his, under pretext of giving him back the king- 
dom which Perdiccas had wrested from him, and 
after feasting him and his son Alexander, who 
was cousin to himself and about his own age, and 
making both drunk, he threw them into a cart, 
and, conveying them thence by night, murdered 
and made way with them. And after com- 
mitting these crimes, he remained unconscious 
of his own wretchedness and did not repent him- 
self, nor did he choose to make himself happy 
by properly educating his brother, a seven-year 
old child and the legitimate son of Perdiccas, 
and restoring to him his kingdom; but shortly 
after he threw the boy into a well and drowned 
him, and then told his mother, Cleopatra, that 
in chasing a goose he had fallen in and per- 
ished. Wherefore, seeing he is guilty of greater 
crimes than any other man in Macedonia, he is 
the most wretched of all the Macedonians, not 
the happiest ; and there is doubtless many a 
one amongst the Athenians, yourself to begin 
with, who would prefer to change places with 
any other Macedonian rather than Archelaus. 
S. At the outset of our conversation, Polus, 
I commended you for the proficiency which I 
thought you showed in rhetoric, although dia- 
lectics, it seemed to me, you had neglected. 
And now, this is the argument, is it, with which 
even a child might refute me, and it is by this 
that you suppose I can be refuted in my asser- 


38 


472 


GORGIAS. 


tion that the unjust man is not the happy one! 
And why do you think so, my friend? I assure 
you there is not a single thing you have said to 
which I agree! 

P. Because you wz// not; for you really be- 
lieve as I say. 

_S.. My dear sir, you are attempting, I see, to 
refute me in rhetorical fashion, just as they of 
the law courts fancy themselves able to refute. 
For there, the one side think they have refuted 
the other, if they are able to bring forward a 
great number of respectable men to bear them 
witness in whatever statements they make, while 
the opposite side are able to bring forward only 
some single witness, or none at all. But a refu- 
tation of this kind has no value whatever in re- 
spect of the truth; for it might be that many 
men of good repute would bear false witness 
against another. And so in this matter, if you 
choose to bring up witnesses to testify that what 
I say is not true, pretty nearly every Athenian 
and stranger, too, will side with you. There is 
Nicias, the son of Niceratus,?? who will bear 
you witness if you like, and his brothers with 
him, they whose tripods stand side by side in 
the place of Dionysus; or, if you like, there 
is Aristocrates, the son of Scellias, he who 
presented that beautiful offering at Delphi; or 
the whole house of Pericles, if you will, or in- 
deed any other of our families that you may 
select. But I, though I stand alone, do not 


GORGIAS. Ss. 


yield my assent. For you do not compel be- 
lief; you do but bring up a host of false wit- 
nesses whereby you think to drive me from 
my own belonging, — even the Truth. But 
for my own part, unless I can bring you your- 
self forward as my one witness to bear testi- 
mony to what I say, I deem that I shall have 
made no progress worth mentioning in the 
matter under discussion; nor to my mind will 
you either, unless I alone by myself bear you 
witness, and you let all the others go their 
way. There is them this one kind of refuta- 
tion which you and many others believe in, and 
there is another in which I myself believe. 
Let us, therefore, place the two side by side, 
and see if they differ in any way one from the 
other. For these questions upon which we are 
at issue are of no slight import, but those which 
it is perhaps the noblest thing in the world 
rightly to understand, and the most disgraceful 
not to understand ; for the upshot of the whole 
consists in knowing or not knowing who is the 
happy man and who is not. In the present 
case, for instance, you believe it possible for 
one who commits acts of injustice and is unjust 
to be a happy man, —that is, if you believe 
Archelaus to be unjust and yet happy. This 
is what we are to suppose you believe, is it not? 

P. Certainly. 

S. And I declare it to beimpossible. Here, 
then, is one point upon which we are at issue. 


40 


473 


GORGIAS. 


Very well. And now, can a wrongdoer be 

happy if he suffers the penalty and is punished ? 
FP. Far from it. In that case he would be 

most wretched. | 

S. But yet, according to your view, the 
wrongdoer is happy, if he suffer no penalty. 

Fi tes 

S. And to my mind, Polus, the unjust man 
and the wrongdoer is wretched in any case; 
still more wretched, however, if he does not pay 
the penalty and suffer the punishment of his 
sins, less wretched if he does pay it and suffer 
punishment at the hands of gods and men. 

P. These are sheer absurdities, Socrates, 
which you are trying to maintain. 

S. And yet I shall try to make you main- 
tain them with me, my good friend, for a friend 
I believe you to be. These, then, are the points 
upon which we differ. Look at them with me. 
Some time since I said, I believe, that to com- 
mit injustice is worse than to suffer it. 

P. To be sure you did. 

S. And you, that to suffer it was worse. 

P88. 

S. And I maintained that wrongdoers are 
wretched, and was refuted by you. 

P. Aye, by Zeus. 

S. In your own opinion, Polus. 

P. Which opinion I think I may say is true. 

S. You, on the other hand, maintain that 
wrongdoers are happy, provided they pay no 
penalty. 


wae 


GORGIAS. Al 


P. To be sure I do. 

S. And I maintain that these are most 
wretched ; those who pay the penalty, less so. 
Do you wish to refute this, too ? 

P. Really, Socrates, this is still harder to 
refute than the other. 

S. Not harder, Polus, but impossible; for 
the truth can never be refuted. 

P. What do you mean? Suppose a man is 
detected unlawfully plotting to obtain despotic 
power, and, being detected, is put on the rack 
and hacked in pieces and has his eyes burned 
out, and after suffering all manner of other 
grievous outrages and seeing his children and 
his wife made to suffer the same, is finally cru- 
cified or burned to death in pitch,2°—do you 
mean to say that such a man will be happier 
.than if he were to get off free, and set himself 
up as tyrant, and spend the rest of his life as 
ruler in the city, doing whatever he pleases, 
envied and accounted happy by his fellow citi- 
zens and by foreigners as well? This, do you 
say, it is impossible to refute ? 

S. This time, most honourable Polus, it is 
bugbears*! you are conjuring up instead of re- 
futing me; awhile ago it was witnesses. But 
pray jog my memory a little. “ Unlawfully plot- 
ting to obtain despotic power,’ you said; did 
you not? 

P. I did. ‘ 

S. Well, Aappier neither of the ‘two can 


42 


474 


GORGTJAS. 


ever be, neither he who has unlawfully acquired 
the power nor he who has been punished, for 
since the two are wretched, there can be no 
question of either being /apfpier. Neverthe- 
less, he who gets off free and exercises despotic 
power is the more wretched. How is this, Po- - 
lus? Are you laughing? What new kind of 
refutation is this, when any one makes a state- 
ment, to laugh at him, and not attempt to refute 
it? 

P. And do you not regard yourself as re- 
futed, Socrates, when the statements you make 
are such as no man alive would grant? Just 
ask any one of the present company. 

S. Iam no statesman, Polus, and last year, 
when I was appointed by lot a member of the 
Senate, and my tribe had the presidency, and 
I had to put a question to vote, a laugh was 
raised at my expense because I did not know 
how to do it.22 So do not now, I beg of you, bid 
me take the votes of those present; but, as 
I said just now, unless you have some better 
proof than votes, hand the matter over to me 
in my turn, and try the proof which I believe 
to be the right one. For one witness to the 
truth of what I say I do know how to summon, 
him, namely, with whom I hold the argument ; 
the others I let alone. And one man’s vote I 
know how to take; to all the others I have 
nothing to say. Consider then, whether you in 
your turn are willing to submit to the test and 


GORGIAS. 43 


to answer my questions. For I believe that 
both I myself and you and all other men do 
regard it as a worse thing to commit injustice 
than to suffer it, and worse not to pay the pen- 
alty of sin than to pay it. 

P. And I, that neither I nor any other 
man at all does so regard it. Why, would you 
yourself prefer to be injured rather than to in- 
jure ? 

S. Yes. And so would you, and & would 
every one. 

P. Quite the contrary, neither would I my- 
self, nor you, nor any one else. 

S. Well then, will you answer my ques- 
tions ? 

P. Indeed I will, for I am eager to know 
what you can possibly find to say. 


[474 C-479 A Polus readily enough assents to 


the proposition that whether it be worse (more 
harmful) or not to commit an injury than to suf- 
fer one, it is nevertheless baser (more dishon- 
ourable) ; and to the question which succeeds 
—whether fair or honourable action does not 


consist of what is either useful or pleasant to - 
him who commits it—he yields a delighted as- | 
sent, not perceiving that a second admission is 
hereby involved, namely, that what is base is | 


necessarily i injurious. or else harmful, in the same 


- 


44 


GORGIJAS. 


that even were it true that to commit injustice 
is not painful, it is certainly injurious: and 
thus injustice, besides being more base, turns 
out to be likewise more harmful to him who 
commits it than to him upon whom it is com- 
mitted. ‘And can it be,’ exclaims Socrates, 
“that you would prefer the more harmful and 
dishonourable thing to that which is less so? 
Do not shrink, Polus, from giving an answer, 
for it willdo you no harm. Nay, rather give 
yourself up unflinchingly to the argument as 
to a surgeon, and answer me ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” 
Thus exhorted, Polus, albeit with tolerably bad 
grace, admits the harmfulness of wrong doing. 
The point now to be considered is whether, 
the offence being once committed, it is a greater 
evil to suffer for it or to avoid punishment. 
Socrates soon extracts the admission that the 
character of any result depends upon the char- 
acter of the action by which this result has 
been brought about. Just as the suffering 
caused by a blow is in proportion to the force 
with which it was dealt, so the effect of punish- 
ment corresponds to the manner of its inflic- 
tion. When it is justly inflicted it is justly 
suffered ; and when justly, then fairly ; and this, 
inasmuch as the fair is either pleasant or useful, 
is necessarily a good to the sufferer. 

Now, there are three great evils, — disease, 
which seeks relief at the hand of the physician, 
poverty, from which the art of money making 


GORGTJAS. 45 


brings release, and wrong doing, which nought 
but punishment can expiate ; and since of these 
three wrong doing is the greatest, it follows 
that next happiest to the man who has never 
harboured evil within his soul, is he who, 
through the ministration of justice, has found 
release from evil. Wherefore those who, like 
Archelaus, commit the greatest crimes and es- 
cape with impunity are of all men most mis- 
erable. | 


S. Indeed, my good friend, such men as 
these might almost be said to have behaved 
like one who is a prey to the most grievous 
diseases, and yet contrives not to pay the phy- 
sicians any penalty for these sins of his body, 
nor be healed, fearing, like a very child, to let 
himself be burned and cut, because, forsooth, 
the process is painful. Or do you not agree 
with me in thinking this? 

P. Certainly I do. 

S. Because he does not know, apparently, 
what bodily health and soundness are. And 
it would appear, Polus, from these conclusions 
of ours, that they who try to flee from the 
penalty of their sins are doing something akin 
to this, for they perceive only the pain, but are 
blind to the usefulness, and do not know how 
much less wretched it is to be linké@ to an 
unsound body than to a soul that is not sound, 


GT é 


46 


GORGIJAS. 


but corrupt and unjust and unholy. Wherefore 
they go to all lengths that they may not suffer 
punishment and thus obtain release from the 
greatest of evils, to this end securing for them- 
selves possessions and friends and every possi- 
ble means of speaking in the most persuasive 
manner. But if the conclusions we have reached, 
Polus, be true, do you not perceive all that fol- 
lows from the argument? Or shall we rather 
work it out together? 

P. Yes, unless you prefer some other way. 

S. Does it not follow, then, that injustice 
or wrong doing is the greatest of all evils? 

P. So it appears. 

S. And has it not furthermore been shown 
that to pay the penalty of sin is a release from 
this evil? 

Pf. I-suppose so. 

S. And that not to pay it is to abide in the 
evil? 

oy) Wee: 

S. Wrong doing, then, is only second in de- 
gree among evils; but not to pay the penalty 
of wrong doing is of all evils the first and 
greatest. 

P. So it seems. 

S. And is not this, my friend, the very 
point upon which we have been at issue, you 
accounting Archelaus happy, the man who, 
though guilty of the greatest acts of injustice, 
has suffered no penalty; I, on the contrary, 


480 


GORGIAS. 47 


believing that Archelaus, or any other man at 
all who pays not the penalty of his injustice, is 
more wretched far than all other men, and that 
he who commits the injustice is always more 
wretched than he who suffers it, he who does 
not pay the penalty than he who does pay it. 
Were not these the assertions I made? 

rigteee | 

S. And is it not proved that I was right in 
making them? 

P. I suppose so. 

S. Very good. Now then, Polus, if all this 
be true, what is the great use of rhetoric? For 
certainly, judging from the conclusions we have 
reached, it behooves a man to keep the strictest 
possible watch over himself lest he act unjustly 
and thereby bring upon himself some grievous 
evil. Is it not so? 

P. Certainly. 

S. And if either he himself or any one 
else for whom he cares act unjustly, then must 
he of his own free will go where, as soon as 
may be, he shall meet his penalty. He must 
go to the judge as he would to the doctor, 
making all speed lest the malady of injustice 
be rendered chronic, and his soul become un- 
sound to the core and past healing. What but 
this can we say, Polus, if our previous admis- 
sions still hold good? Is it not in this way, 


and no other, that these last can be brought 


into unison with them? 


48 


GORGJAS. 


P. What else, indeed, Socrates, can we say? 

S. To the end, therefore, of pleading excuse 
for sin, whether committed by one’s self, or by 
one’s parents or friends or children, or by one’s 
own country, rhetoric, Polus, is of no use to 
us; unless, indeed, it be assumed that a man 
ought to accuse first himself and afterwards his 
kinsfolk and his friends, if at any time one of 
these have been guilty of injustice, attempting 
no concealment of the sin, but bringing it to 
the light, in order that by suffering the penalty 
he may regain health ; insisting, moreover, that 
neither he himself nor any of the others shall 
play the coward, but that he shall yield him- 
self up bravely and with blinded eyes, as to a 


surgeon, to be cut or cauterized, and in his pur- 


suit of the good and noble shall take no pain 
into account, but give himself up to be beaten 
if the sin he has committed be deserving of 
blows, or to be sent to prison if it deserves 
chains, if a fine, to be fined, if exile, to be ban- 
ished, if death, to die, he being foremost to ac- 
cuse himself and those of his own kin, and using 
his oratory to the end that their deeds may be 
made manifest, and they be delivered from the 
greatest of all evils, injustice. Do we say yes 
to this, Polus, or do we not ? 

FP. Strange sayings these, Socrates, it seems 
to me! but I suppose they tally with the state- 
ments you made before. 

S. Well, must not either those statements 
be disproved, or else these follow of necessity ? 


481 


GORGIAS. men 49 


P. Yes, that is a fact. 

S. And now, looking at it again from the 
other side, if you have to do some one a harm 
— it matters not whether he be an enemy 
of your own or not, if only you be not the one 
who is injured, for that of course is to be 
avoided ; *8 but assuming another man to have 
been the victim —then you should in every way, 
both by speech and action, lay your plans to 
make him escape the penalty and not be brought 
before the judge. Or if he be brought there, 
then you should so contrive that the enemy, in- 
stead of suffering the penalty, shall make good 
his escape ; and if he has gained great riches by 
plunder, that he keep instead of restoring them, 
squandering them upon himself and his friends 
in unjust and ungodly fashion ; and if the injus- 
tice he has committed be worthy of death, that 
he be not suffered to die for it, — no, never, if 
possible, — but that he continue immortal in his 
wickedness, or if this may not be, that he live 
as long as possible, just as he is. It is to such 
ends as these, Polus, that oratory seems to me 
useful, but to one who does not intend to com- 
mit injustice there is in my opinion no great 
use for it; if, indeed, there be any use at all, 
for certainly so far none has been made ap- 
parent. 

C. Tell me, Chaerephon, is Socrates in ear- 
nest about this, or in jest ? 

Ch. He seems to me, Callicles, to be uncom- 

4 


50 


GORG/AS. 


monly in earnest. However, there is nothing 
like asking the man himself. 

C. By the gods, that is just what I am eager 
to do. Tell me, Socrates, are we to set you 
down now as in earnest, or in jest? For, if 
you are in earnest, and if what you say is true, 
would not this life of ours be turned completely 
upside down, and are we not apparently doing 
the very opposite of what we ought ? 

S. Were it not, Callicles, for certain experi- 
ences which, in one shape to some men, to oth- 
ers in another, are common to all, —were the 
experiences of each one of us peculiar to him- 
self, and different from those of everybody else, 
—it would be no easy matter to make another 
understand one’s own experience. I say this, 
remembering that you and I have had the same 
experience, both of us being in love, each 
with two objects, I with Alcibiades, the son of 
Cleinias, and with philosophy, you with the De- 
mus (people) of Athens, and with Demus, the 
son of Pyrilampes.*% Now,I have constantly 
observed that, for all your being so masterful, 
whatever either of your favourites may say 
and however he may say a matter stands, you 
are never able to oppose him, but are always 
shifting your ground backwards and forwards. 
In the Assembly, if you have made some asser- 
tion which the Demus of Athens disputes, you 
veer about and say whatever suits his pleasure, 
and with this fair son of Pyrilampes you do the 


482 


GORGIAS. 51 


same thing. You find it impossible to withstand 
the words and the counsels of your favourites, 
insomuch that if any one were to express sur- 
prise at the nonsense you are constantly talking 
just for their pleasure, you would probably in- 
form him, if you were willing to speak the 
truth, that unless somebody will put a stop to 
your favourites’ saying such things, you will 
never stop saying them. Make up your mind, 
then, that this is the kind of answer you will 
get from me; and instead of wondering that I 
talk in this way, stop philosophy, my favourite, 
from talking thus. For she, my dear friend, 
is ever repeating the words you have heard 
from me; and she, of all my favourites, is the 
least fickle by far. The son of Cleinias indeed, 
of whom we spoke, is now of one mind, now of 
another, but philosophy is ever of the same 
mind; and these are her assertions at which 
you now wonder, although you yourself were 
present when they were made. Either then, 
as I have said before, refute what she said, that 
to commit injustice and not pay the penalty is 
the uttermost of evils; or if you let this go un- » 
refuted, I swear, Callicles, by the dog, the God 
of the Egyptians, that Callicles shall not agree 
with you, but shall be at discord with you all 
the days of his life. In truth, my friend, to 
my mind it were better for me that_my lyre or 
any chorus of my training were out of tune 
and gave forth discords,® and better that the 


52 


GORG/AS. 


mass of men disagreed with me and contra- 
dicted me, — better all” | this, than that I, one 


PP caar alone, should be at “discord with myself 


and contradict myself, 

C. Methinks, Socrates, you are running riot 
with the argument, like the genuine ranter you 
are. And you are ranting now in this fashion, 
because Polus has allowed himself to be treated 
just as he blamed Gorgias for letting you treat 
him. For the assertion Polus made was, I be- 
lieve, that when Gorgias was asked by you 
whether if a man came to him who wanted to 
learn rhetoric but had no knowledge of justice 
he would impart this knowledge, he was shamed 
into declaring that he would, and this out of mere 
deference to public sentiment, which would be 
offended if any one were to say he would not; 
and that in consequence of this admission he 
was forced to contradict himself, and you, of 
course, were delighted. And at that time 
it was you whom Polus was turning into ridi- 
cule, — rightly, too, I think, — whereas he now 
in his turn has met with the same fate; and 
this is the very reason why I do not admire 
Polus, because he has given in to your assertion 
that it is baser to commit injustice than to 
suffer it. For in consequence of this admission 
he in his turn got entangled in the net you 
spread for him, and what he had to say was cut 
short because he was ashamed to speak his own 
mind. The fact is, Socrates, that, under pre- 


483 


GORGIAS. 53 


tence of pursuing the truth, you are always 
leading up to vulgar and fallacious notions of 
this kind, fair not by nature, but only by con- 
vention. For these two, nature and conven- 
tion, are for the most part opposed one to the 
other, so that when a man is ashamed and 
dares not say what he thinks, he must of neces- 
sity fall into self-contradiction. And this pre- 
cisely is the sly trick you have invented to twist 
the argument: if a man uses terms in their 
conventional meaning, you ask a question taking 
them in their natural sense; if he uses them in 
their natural sense, you slip in a conventional 
meaning. For instance,in this present matter 
of committing and suffering injustice; when Po- 
lus was speaking of that which is conventionally 
more base, you followed up his “convention- 
ally’ with your~ “according to nature.” For 
if you go by nature, everything which is worse, 
such as suffering injustice, is likeygise baser ; 
only by convention is it baser to commit in- 
justice. For this suffering injustice is the part 
not of afree man, but of a slave, for whom to 
die is better than to live, who, downtrodde 

and abused, has no power to help either him- 
self or any one else for whom he cares. But 
my belief is that they who make the laws, that 
is, the majority, are the really weak men. It is 
therefore with a view to themselves and to their 


_ own interest that they make the laws and be- 


stow praise and deal out blame; and in order 


54 


——— 


GORGIAS. 


to frighten off the bolder sort of men and to 
prevent their gaining the advantage which 
they might otherwise have, they declare that it 
is base and unjust to claim any advantage at 
all, and that striving to get the advantage over 
others is precisely what constitutes injustice. 
And well, I think, may they be content, inferior 
as they are, to find themselves on an equality 
with the others. 

Thus has come about the conventional say- 
ing that trying to get more than others is un- 
just and base, and this is what is called acting 
unjustly ; whereas nature, it seems to me, shows 


‘us that it is right for the better man to have 


more than the inferior, the more powerful more 
than the less powerful. And in divers places, 
both in the animal races and amongst men, 
throughout whole states and tribes together, 
she makes it manifest that this is true, and that 
justice is held to consist in the superior ruling 
over the inferior and taking advantage of them. 
In virtue of what right, I should like to know, 
did Xerxes lead an army against Greece, or his 
father against the Scythians, not to mention a 
thousand other instances of the kind which I 
might name. Nay, my belief is that these deeds 
are enacted because they are according to na- 
ture, —aye, by Zeus, and according to the law of 
nature, though not the same law, I grant you, 
as that which we impose when we mould into 
shape the best and manliest amongst us, whom 


484 


GORGIAS. 55 


we take from childhood like young lions,® and 
break their spirit by means of enchantments 
and spells, telling them that all must have an 
equal share, and that this is what is fair and 
just. But my belief is, that if ever there ap- 
pears among them a man of sufficient spirit, 
he will shake off all these trammels, and tear 
them asunder and burst away from them, and 
trampling under foot all these our written rules 
and magic arts and incantations, and such laws 


as are against nature, our slave shall confront | 


us and stand forth our master, and then shall 
shine forth clearly that which by nature is just. 
Pindar, I think, brings out exactly what I mean 
in that ode where he says that “Law is the 
king of all, both mortals and immortals.” 
““Moreover,’ he continues, “deeds the most 
violent he justifies, plundering with powerful 


hand; as proof whereof behold the deeds of \ 


Heracles ; for all unbought —.” It runs some- 
thing like that, although I do not know the ode 
by heart. At all events, he goes on to say that, 
although the oxen had been neither given nor 
sold to him by Geryon, he carried them off, 


assuming that this was his natural right, and 


that oxen and all other possessions belonging 
to the weaker and inferior are the property of 
the stronger and superior.*” 

That this is the truth of the case you shall 
learn, if you will let philosophy alone and pass 
on to higher matters. For philosophy, Socra- 


i 
| 
: 


50 


4 


# 


; } 


- GORGIAS. 


fes, is a pleasing thing enough if a man en- 
} gages in it moderately and at the proper age; 
/ but if he lingers over it longer than he ought, it 


Wee comes his ruin, For however great may be 


Ys \ 


485 


_ his natural parts, “ts, if he goes on with philosophy 
beyond the proper age, he must of necessity find 
himself without experience in all the matters in 
which that man must be versed who would be a 
citizen of worth and eminence.*® For men such 
as these know nothing of the laws of the state 
or of the terms used in all kinds of dealings 
with other men, whether private or public, or 
of the pleasures and desires of men; in short, 
they are altogether unacquainted with the hu- 
manities of life. Whenever, then, they enter 
upon any transaction, whether private or public, 
they make themselves ridiculous; just as public 
men, I dare say, become ridiculous whenever 
they in their turn enter into your pursuits and 
discussions. For it is as Euripides says :— 
“Each man in that doth shine, and that pursue, 

And the best hours of day to that devote 

Wherein he may the most excel himself.” 

But in whatever thing he finds himself de- 
ficient, that he avoids and decries, while the 
thing wherein he excels he praises out of pure 
self-love, thinking thus to gain praise for him- 
self. But to my thinking the best way is to 
have some share in both of these. To have 
enough philosophy to complete one’s general 
training is an excellent thing, and it is no dis- 


GORGIAS. 57 


grace for a lad to dabble in it. But when it 
comes to a man already advanced in years 
who still keeps on with philosophy, the thing, 
Socrates, becomes ridiculous, and I, for my 
part, feel towards those who continue to pursue 
it very much as I do towards those who lisp 
and behave in other respects like children. 
For when I see a child, whom this way of 
speaking yet befits, lisping as he plays about, I 
am charmed, and think it pleasing and unaf- 
fected and suited to his childish years; nay, 
when I hear some little creature speak dis- 
tinctly, it is disagreeable to me and wounds my 
ears, and I find in it something slavishly me- 
chanical. But when we hear a man lisp or see 
him behaving himself like a child, we feel that 
he is putting himself in a ridiculous and un- 
manly light and deserves a good beating. Now 
this is just what I feel in regard to those who 
follow philosophy. When I see a young lad 
with a taste for philosophy, I am well pleased 
and regard it as becoming, and such a one I 
set down as a true freeman; while he who 
takes no interest in philosophy seems to mea 
slavish creature, who will never deem himself 
capable of any high or noble action. But when 
I see an old fellow who still goes on with phil- 
osophy, instead of leaving it behind him, that 
man, Socrates, seems to me to deserve a beat- 
ing on the spot. For, as I said just now, one 
of that sort, however well endowed by nature, 


58 


486 


GORGJAS. 


if he avoids the heart of the city and the public 
places where, as the poet says, men acquire 
eminence, must necessarily become unmanly ; 
and accordingly he skulks away and passes the 
rest of his life in a corner, whispering into the 
ear of three or four youths, but never raising 
his voice to utter a word that is great or sound 
or worthy of a freeman. | 

Now, I, Socrates, am really very well dis- 
posed towards you; indeed, I feel very much 
as Zethus did towards Amphion in that pas- 
sage of Euripides of which I reminded you. 
And I am impelled to address to you the very 
same reproaches which he addressed to his 
brother, that you, Socrates, pay no heed to the 
things for which you ought to care,” but clothe 
a soul noble by nature in a kind of puerile dis- 
guise, and in a court of justice could neither 
state a case aright, nor devise aught plausible 
and persuasive, nor make any stout-hearted re- 
solve in behalf of another. Wherefore tell me 
truly, my dear Socrates, and do not get angry 
with me, for I speak out of kindness to you, 
does it not seem to you a disgraceful thing to 
be in such case as I believe not you alone but 
all others to be in who are forever delving 
into the depths of philosophy? Only suppose 
that some one were to seize you or any one 
else of your own sort, and drag you off to 
prison, declaring you guilty of a crime which 
you had not committed at all: you know well 


GORGTAS. 59 


enough that you could do nothing to help your- 
self, but would stand there with swimming head 
and open mouth, and never a word to say ; and 
when you came to appear before the court, 
however mean and low your accuser, you would 
have to die, if he chose that death should be 
your penalty. And how, Socrates, can that art 
be wise which converts a man of fine parts , 
into an inferior creature, incapable of helping \ 
himself or of saving either his own life or that | 
of any one else from the greatest dangers, and | 
leaves him to be stripped by his enemies of ’ 
all his substance and to live as a complete out- 
law in the state? Sucha one as this, if it be 
not unmannerly so to speak, any man may 
slap in the face and not be called to account 
for it.4!_ Nay, my friend, yield to my counsels ; 
leave off this habit of refuting, and practice 
the art of dealing with realities, and practice 
also that which shall gain you a reputation for 
common sense, leaving to other men these 
over-niceties, whether they are to be called fol- 
lies or nonsense, whereby you will only be 
brought to dwell in an empty house ; * and 
emulate not the men who spend their time in 
probing these insignificant questions, but rather 
those who possess means and reputation and 
all the other good things of life. 

S. Had it so chanced, Callicles, that my soul 
were made of gold, should I not, think you, 
have rejoiced to discover one of those stones, 


GORGTJAS. 


the best one of its kind, whereby gold is tested, 
that I might apply my soul to it, and, if it as- 


sured me that my soul had been trained aright, 


487 


might then know myself to be in sound con- 
dition, and in need of no further test ? 

C. What is your object, Socrates, in asking 
this? 

S. I will tell you presently. In you I be- 
lieve that I have found such a touchstone, 

C. How so? 

S. Because I know very well that if you 
assent to any one of my soul’s beliefs they must 
be surely true. For I am convinced that he 
who desires thoroughly to test a souland know 
whether or not it lives aright, must possess 
three qualities, all of which you do possess — 
knowledge and good-will and assurance. Many 
people I meet who are not capable of testing 
me, because they are not clever like you; while 
others there are who, though clever enough, 
are not willing to tell me the truth, because 
they do not care for me as you do. These very 
two guests of ours, Gorgias and Polus, are 
clever enough, to be sure, and are also kindly 
disposed towards me, but they are deficient in 
assurance, and far more diffident than they 
should be. How, indeed, can this be denied, 
when so far have they carried their diffidence 
that just on account of it each of them dares 
contradict his own words before a host of wit- 
nesses, and this on matters of the greatest im- 


GORGIAS. 61 


portance ? Now you possess all these qual- 
ities which the others lack, being sufficiently 
educated, as many of the Athenians would tes- 
tify, and well disposed towards me_ besides. 
What proof have I of this? I willtell you. I 
am aware, Callicles, that four of you are banded 
together in the quest of wisdom: yourself, 
namely, and Tisander of Aphidnz, and An- 
dron the son of Androtion, and Nausicydes of 
Cholarges.4® And once I heard you taking 
counsel together as to how far wisdom ought 
to be pursued, and I know that at that time 
some such opinion as this obtained among you, 
that it was not well to follow philosophy into . 
detail ; you even exhorted one another to take » 
care lest by becoming over-wise you should 
unwittingly work your own ruin. When, there- 
fore, I hear you giving me the same advice 
that you gave your own most intimate friends, 
— this to me is sufficient proof that you do 
truly wish me well. And that you are, more- 
over, capable of speaking out boldly and with- 
out diffidence you yourself declare, and this 
is borne out also by the speech you made just 
now. It is evident, therefore, that the state 
of the case is thus: if you assent to any of 
my .opinions, that opinion will have been suf- 
ficiently tested by myself as well as by you, 
and there will be no need of applying to it any 
other touchstone. For you would never have 
agreed with me either through lack of wisdom 


62 


488 


GORGTJAS. 


or by reason of diffidence ; nor would you have 
done so to deceive me, since you are my friend, 
as you yourself declare. Whatever, then, you 
and I together agree upon, that of a surety 
will be the perfection of truth. And of all 
searches, Callicles, that one is noblest which is 
concerned with those questions about which 
you took me to task, namely, what a man should 
be, and what he should pursue, and up to what 
point, both in old age and in youth. For if in 
the conduct of my own life I do what is not 
right, you know very well that I err not wit- 
tingly, but because of my ignorance. Do not, 
then, forbear to admonish me as you began by 
doing, but make it clear to me what I ought to 
pursue, and in what way I may acquire the 
same; and if you detect me now holding some 
principle in common with you, and at some later 
day acting at variance with the same, you may 
set me down for a dolt and a good for nothing, 
and never admonish me again. Pray, then, go 
back to the beginning, and tell me how you and 
Pindar define natural justice. Does it mean 
that the stronger are to carry off by force the 
possessions of the weaker, and the better to 
rule over the worse, and the superior to have 
more than the inferior? Do you define justice 
as other than this, or does my memory serve 
me right? 

C. Yes, that was what I said then, and what 
I say now. 


GORGIAS. 63 


[488 B-489 B_ Socrates now demands a closer defi- 
nition of the terms “ superior” and “stronger.” 
Is the one necessarily included in the other, 
or is, on the contrary, superiority compatible 
with physical weakness, inferiority with bodily 
strength? With great decision Callicles pro- 
nounces superiority and strength to be identical. 
But, answers Socrates, since, “according to 
the law of nature,” the physically stronger are 
also the superior, they who are in the majority 
must needs be right. Now, in the opinion of 
the majority, to commit injustice is more igno- 
ble than to suffer it ; hence it follows that the 
self-same thing which Callicles has previously 
declared to be a mere convention is now out of 
his very mouth proved to be the truth, and this 
according to “nature,” not “convention.” 

Here, Callicles attempts to escape the con- 
sequences of his ill-fated assertion by changing 
the definition of his terms. ] 


C. This fellow never will have done trifling! 
Tell me, Socrates, are you not ashamed, at your 
age, to be always on the hunt after words, — if 
a man happens to make a slip in an expression, 
looking upon it as a godsend? Do you suppose 
that by the superior I mean any but the bet- 
ter? Have I not been telling you this long 
time that to me the superior and the better are 
the same? You do not suppose I mean, do 


64 


GORGIAS. 


you, that if any rabble of slaves and all manner 
of men who are of no account whatever, save 
perhaps in the way of physical strength, get 
together and make any statement they please, 
the same is law? 

S. Very good, most wise Callicles. So this 
is the view you take, is it ? 

C. Of course it is. 

S. Well, my dear sir, I myself have been 
for some time conjecturing that by the superior 
you did mean something of this kind; but I am 
putting the question again, because I am eager 
to know exactly what your meaning is. For I 

»do not really suppose you believe that two men 
must be better than one, or that your slaves 
are better than you because forsooth they are 
stronger. But I wish you would go back to the 
beginning and say what you do mean by the 
better, since it is not the stronger. And do, 
pray, my good sir, instruct me a little more 
mildly, if you would not have me run away from 
your school. 

C. You are pleased to be, sarcastic, Socra- 
tes. 

S. Not so, Callicles, by that Zethus under 
cover of whom you were just now launching 
so many sarcasms against me. But come, tell 
us whom you do call the better ? 

C. The better sort of men, of course. 

S. There, do you not see that after all you 
yourself are only repeating words and not ex- 


GORGIAS. 65 


plaining anything! Will you not say whether 
by the better and the superior you mean any 
other than those who have more practical wis- 
dom ? 
C. I mean those, by Zeus; most distinctly 
I do. 
490 S. Frequently then, judging by what you 
say, one wise man will be superior to ten thou- 
’ sand who are not wise, and he it is who should 
rule, while the others should be ruled; and he 
who rules should have the advantage of those 
who are ruled. This, as I understand it, is 
what you would say —and, believe me, I am 
not word-hunting —if the one be superior to 
the ten thousand. 

C. Yes, that is what I mean. For I believe 
that natural justice consists in letting the bet- 
ter and wiser man rule over his inferiors and 
have the advantage over them. 

S.° Wait a minute. What is this you are 
saying now? Just suppose that we are, as at 
this moment, a goodly number of men together, 
and that we have in common a quantity of 
food and drink, and that we are of every sort 
and kind, some strong, others weak; but that 
one of us, being a physician, has more knowl- 
edge of these particular matters, although in 
other respects he is probably like the rest of 
us, — stronger than some, weaker than others, 
— would not he, having more knowledge than 
ourselves, be our better: and superior as to these 
matters ? 


GORGIAS. 


C. Certainly. 

S. Ought he, then, to have a larger share of 
this food than the rest of. us, because he is bet- 
_ ter; or ought he, in virtue of his authority, to 
have absolute control of its distribution, but, in 
the matter of consuming and using it for his 
own body, to take, if he would be free from 
blame, no more than falls to his share, which 
would be larger than the portion of some, 
smaller than that of others; in such wise that 
if he happens to be the weakest of the whole, 
the ‘smallest share of all will fall to the best 
man, Callicles? Is it not so, my good fellow? 

C. You talk of food, and drink, and physi- 
cians, and all such stuff; but Iam not talking 
about these. 

S. Well, do you mean that the wiser is the 
better man ? Answer me, “yes” or “no,” 

C. Yes, I do. 

S. But surely, you think that the better man 
should have the larger share ? 

C. Not of food, nor of drink either. 

S. Oh, I see; you mean of clothes, I sup- 
pose. And so the best weaver is to have the 
largest cloak, and go about clad in the finest 
cloaks and the largest number of the same. 

C. Who talks of cloaks ? 

S. But in the matter of shoes, at least, it is 
plain that the best and most intelligent maker 
of these is to have the largest share. The 
shoemaker, of course, is to go about shod in the 
biggest shoes, and the largest number of them. 


491 


GORGIAS. 67 


C. Who talks of shoes? You will persist in 
your nonsense. 

S. Well, if you do not mean that. sort of 
thing, it is probably something of this kind. A 
husbandman, for instance, who has a practical 
and thorough knowledge of land, is to have, I 
suppose, a larger share of the seeds, and to 
use the largest quantity of them upon his own 
land. 

C. How you do keep saying over the same 
thing, Socrates ! 

S. Not only the same thing, Callicles, but > 
upon the same subjects also. © 

C. Yes, by the gods, you literally never have 


_ done harping on the subject of cobblers, and 


fullers, and cooks, and doctors, just as if our 
discussion had anything to do with these.# 

S. But why do you not tell us what the © 
things are of which the better and wiser man 
is entitled to have a larger share? or do you 
intend neither to accept my suggestions, nor to 
make any yourself ? 

C. Why, I have been telling you this long 
time. ,In the first place, by the superior I mean 
not cobblers, nor cooks either, but such as have 
a knowledge of state affairs and of the way in 
which they should be administered, and not 
simply knowledge, but courage as well, and 
hence the ability to carry through whatever 
they may have set their mind upon, and who 
swill not be turned from their purpose by faint- 
ness of heart. 


68 


GORGIAS. 


S. Do you observe, my dear Callicles, how 
different is your charge against me from mine 
against you? You complain that I am forever 
saying the same things, and take me to task for 
this; I, on the other hand, complain that you 
never say the same thing upon the same sub- 
jects, but at one time define the better and su- 
perior as the stronger, at another as the wiser ; 
and now here again you are presenting still 
another view, for you declare the better and su- 
perior to be the more courageous. Now do, my 
friend, tell me once and for all whom you really 
mean by the better and superior, and in what 
they are so. 

C. But I have already told you that I mean 
those who have knowledge and courage in 
affairs of state. These are the men to whom 
it belongs to rule our cities, and justice con- 
sists in their having the advantage over the 
others, — the rulers over those who are ruled. 

S. What, over themselves, my friend ! ® 

C. What do you mean ? 

S. I mean that every man is ruler over him- 
self; or is it not his duty to rule himself, but 
only others? 

C. What do you mean by ruling himself? 

S. Nothing out of the common, but just 
what is generally meant, — being temperate, and 
exercising self-control, and ruling over the pleas- 
ures and the desires within himself. 

C. What an innocent you are! Actually, 


49 


j ts 
GORGIAS. 69 


you are describing those simpletons, the tem- 
perate. 

S. Of course Iam. Any one might know 
that it is they I mean. 

C. And simpletons they are, Socrates, with 
a vengeance!*6 How, I ask you, can a man 
possibly be happy if he is in subjection to any- 
thing whatsoever? No; that which is by na- 
ture just and right is that which I now boldly 
proclaim it to be,—he who would live aright 
must allow his desires full growth, and on no 
account restrain them, but must, by dint of au- . 
dacity and astuteness, qualify himself to minis- 
ter to them when they shall have attained their 
fullest growth, and to gratify each appetite as 
it arises. But this, I suppose, is not possible 
to the generality of men, and so, ashamed of 
their own incompetency, they seek to hide it 
by casting reproach upon men of the other sort, 
and they give out that unrestraint is shameful, 
in order, as I said before, to bring under sub- 
jection those who are by nature the better 
men; and because they are unable to procure 
satisfaction for their own desires, they extol 
temperance and justice, all by reason of their 
own unmanliness. Those, for example, who 
were born the sons of kings, or those who are 
by nature gifted with ability to gain some kind 
of sovereignty or tyranny or some part in an 
oligarchy, — what greater evil or disgrace than 
temperance could there be to men of this sort? 


7O 


GORGIAS. 


Free as they are to enjoy good things, and with 
no one to hinder them, would you have them 
bring upon themselves the laws and opinions 
and censure of the mass of mankind as mas- 
ters? How, indeed, can they fail of being made 
wretched through this noble virtue of justice 
and temperance, if they may award to friends no 
more than to enemies, and this when actually 
bearing rule in their own city? Nay, Socrates, 
by that truth which you profess to seek, the real 
state of the case is this: luxury and excess and 
license, provided they have power behind them, 
are virtue and happiness, and the other things 
you talk about, the fine speeches, the unnatural 
conventionalities, are all of a piece, — mere 
popular talk, and of no account whatever. 

S. Certainly, Callicles, there is nothing half- 
hearted in your bold treatment of the question. 
You come out openly with what other men think, 
but are not willing to say. I beg, therefore, 
that you will on no account leave off until it has 
become clear to us how we ought to live. And 
tell me this; you maintain that if a man is to 
be what he ought, he must not restrain his 
desires, but allow them to attain their fullest 
growth, and in one way or another provide for 
their gratification ; and this you maintain to be 
virtue ? : 

C. Yes, that is what I maintain. 

S. Then, they who have no wants at all 


cannot rightly be said to be happy ? 


493 


GORGIAS. 71 


C. No, indeed; for in that case stones and 
dead men were happiest of all. 

S. Truly, from what you tell us, life is an 
awful thing. Indeed I should not be at all 
surprised if Euripides were right when he says: 

“Who knows whether to live be not to die? 
To die to live?” # 
And perhaps in reality we are dead, just as I 
myself once heard from one of the wise men, 
that we are dead even now, and that the body 
is our tomb, and that the part of the soul which 
contains our desires is of a nature easy to be 
persuaded and made to drift back and forth. 
And a certain ingenious man, a Sicilian, I 
think, or an Italian, expressed this in a fable. 
From the credulous nature of the soul and its 
readiness to be persuaded, he called it, by a 
play on words, a vessel,#® and the thoughtless 
he called uninitiated or leaky ; and the part 
of their souls which contains the desires, that 
part which is unrestrained and unretentive, he 
likened, on account of its insatiableness, to a 


' vessel perforated with holes. Just the reverse, 


Callicles, you see, from yourself, he sets forth 
how in Hades — meaning, of course, the invis- 
ible world —the uninitiated must be of all 
most wretched, forever dipping water into their 
leaky vessels with a sieve equally leaky. And 
by the sieve, as he who told me the tale ex- 
plained, he meant the soul; and the soul of the 
thoughtless he likened to a sieve, because it is 


72 


GORGIJAS. 


as it were full of holes, and is incapable of re- 
taining anything by reason of its unbelief and 
forgetfulness. Now, that there is something 
rather absurd about all this, I grant you; but 
still, it brings out the point which. I wish to 
make clear, in order to persuade you, if I pos- 
sibly can, to change your mind and, in place of 
the life which is insatiable and given over to 
excess, to choose that which is moderate and 
content with what it has, and satisfied with the 
mere necessities of life. But, tell me, is this at 
all convincing to you, and are you coming round 
to the notion that the temperate are happier 
than those who are given over to excess; or 
would any number of the like tales, were I to 
tell you them, have no effect in changing your 
mind ? / 

C. There, Socrates, you are nearer the 
truth. 

S. Come then, let me give you another 
simile belonging to the same school. See 
whether you would say in regard to these two 
lives, that of the temperate and that of the 
licentious man, that it is as if two men had 
each a certain number of jars, those belonging 
to the first man being sound, and filled, one with 
wine, one with honey, one with milk, and so 
on, one with one thing and one with another, 
although the sources of supply are so scanty 
and hard of access that only by long and severe 
labour can he keep himself supplied. This man, 


494 


GORGIAS. 73 


then, when he has once filled his jars needs not 
to bring further supplies or give himself any . 
further trouble, but, so far as that goes, may 
take his ease ; but the other, although, like the 
first one, he is able to supply himself from the 
sources, has jars which are all unsound and full 
of holes, so that he must needs forever, day 
and night, keep on filling them, if he would not 
suffer the uttermost pangs. Such, then, being 
the life of each, do you call that of the licen- 
tious man happier than that of the moderate 
one? Does this tale of mine persuade you into 
agreeing with me that the life of self-restraint 
is better than that of excess, or do I not con- 
vince you? 

C. You do not convince me, Sects cu for 
the man who is satisfied has no longer any 
pleasure left him; in fact, it is as I said just 
now : to be satisfied is to live like a stone, feel- 
ing neither pleasure nor pain. No, indeed, all 
the pleasure of life consists in this, — in having 
the inflow as great as possible. 

S. But if the inflow be great, must ae of 
necessity the outflow be great also, and the 
holes, moreover, large enough to admit of this 
outflow ? 

C. Of course. 

S. Then you in your turn are describing 
the life not of a dead man or a stone, but that 
of a kind of cormorant. Tell me, pray, do 
you mean such things as hunger and eating to 
gratify hunger? 


74 


GORGIAS. 


Co de, 

S. And thirst and drinking to gratify 
thirst ? 

C. I mean these, and having every other 
kind of desire as well, and being able to gratify 
them all, and so live a life of happiness. 

S. Well said, my fine fellow. Only keep 
on as you have begun, and take care that you 
are not shamed into drawing back. 


[494 C-505 B Prefacing the coming illustration by 


the announcement that it requires all the bold- 
ness which he has just enjoined upon Callicles, 
Socrates now asks whether if a man suffering 
from irritability of the skin be allowed to rub 
himself all day long, he can be said to lead a 
pleasant and happy life. 

Although Callicles answers in the affirma- 
tive, — being put on his mettle by a further al- 
lusion to the diffidence of Polus and Gorgias, — 
he shows signs of wavering as to the complete 
identity of pleasure and good, and when finally 
asked to restate his opinion upon this subject, 
it is with evident reluctance that he replies, 
“ Well, lest I contradict myself if I say they 
are different, I declare them to be the same.” 

‘But, Callicles,’ Socrates remonstrates, “you 
are doing away with your former assertion, and 
will be no longer qualified to join me in the 
search for truth, if you say what is contrary to 
your real opinion.” 


GORGIAS. : 75 


“ Why, so do you, Socrates,”’ is the rejoinder. 
Whereupon Socrates remarks: “Then I am not 
doing what is right, any more than you are.” 

Callicles no longer hesitates to reiterate his 
belief that good is identical with pleasure. His 
subsequent assertion that knowledge and cour- 
age are different from pleasure and also from 
one another is thus greeted by Socrates :— 

“Well, let us not forget this, that Callicles 
the Archarnian © has pronounced pleasure and 
good to be identical, but knowledge and cour- 
age to be different from each other and also 
from the good.” 

“ But Socrates of Alopece of course does not 
agree with us in this, or does he, perhaps ?” 

“He does not,” is the answer, “nor will Cal- 
licles either, I think, when he shall have beheld 
himself truly.” 

The question is now raised whether opposites 
of any kind can exist simultaneously. Is not a - 
man said to be in good health only when he is 
free from disease, or to be diseased only when 
not in a state of health? And is it not equally 
true of good and evil, happiness and wretched- 
ness, and indeed of all other antitheses, that 
each in turn follows or else is followed by its 
opposite? “If, then,” continues Socrates, “we 
discover opposites which simultaneously exist 
or cease to exist, it is evident that these cannot 
possibly be the good and the evil.” Assured 
by Callicles of his “unlimited assent” to this 


76 


GORGTIAS. 


statement, Socrates next ascertains that pleas- 
ure and pain on the contrary do exist simulta- 
neously. When suffering, for instance, from 
hunger and thirst, we feel the pain of the want 
at the very moment of gratifying it, insomuch 
that no sooner does the pain cease than the 
pleasure of its gratification ceases also. Here 
Callicles impatiently exclaims: “I do not un- 
derstand, Socrates, what all this hair-splitting 
is about !” : 

“Yes, you do, Callicles,” is the reply, “but 
you choose to affect ignorance. Pray go on to 
the next step, that you may discover how clever 
you are, who are taking meto task. Do we not 
all of us, when we drink, get rid of thirst and 
of pleasure at the same moment ?”’ 

“T do not know,” reiterates Callicles, “what 
you are talking about.” 

But here Gorgias comes to the rescue of the 
argument. ‘“ Do not, Callicles,” he expostu- 
lates, “behave in this way, but answer for our 
sakes, that the discussion may be carried on to 
the end.” 

“But it is always the same story, Gorgias, 
with Socrates. He will keep on asking little, 
good-for-nothing questions, and this is what 
he calls refuting.” 

“Well, why do you mind that? It will do 
you no harm, Callicles. Do, pray, let Satara 
argue in whatever way he prefers.” 

“ Go on, then, you,” thus Callicles addresses 


GORGTIAS. 77 


Socrates, “with your petty little questions, 
since Gorgias will have it so.” 

“You are a lucky man, Callicles,” is the re- 
joinder, ‘‘to have been initiated into the greater 
mysteries before the lesser.** Idid not know 
before that this was lawful.” 

Returning now to the charge, Socrates ob- 
tains from Callicles the confession that al- 
though the man of sense and courage, not the 
fool and the coward, is rightly called the good 
man, the coward is, nevertheless, capable of ex- 
periencing a keener pleasure or pain, at the 
enemy’s retreat or advance in battle, than the 
brave man can possibly experience. And now, 
pleading in excuse the old adage, that “ twice, 
nay even thrice, is it well to say over words of 
wisdom and pass them in review,” ® Socrates 
draws the inevitable conclusion that, assuming 
pleasure and good to be identical, he who feels 
the keenest pleasure must needs be the better 
man, and that the coward or bad man is there- 
fore proved to be as good or even better than 
the good one. 

Callicles is now fairly driven off his ground, 
but instead of acknowledging his defeat, he 
contemptuously remarks : “ All this time, Soc- 
rates, that I have been listening to you, and 
giving my assent, I have observed that the 
most trifling concession, even when made in 
jest, you cling to with delight, just as a young 
boy might do. As if you could really suppose 


78 


GORGIAS, 


that I or any other human being does not 
hold that some pleasures are better, others 
worse!” 5 

“Dear me, Callicles,’ Socrates exclaims, 
“what a sly fellow you are! Why, you treat 
me just as if I were a child, one moment telling 
me that things are so, the next that they are 
otherwise, as if on purpose to deceive me. How 
little I thought in the beginning that you, 
whom I took for a friend, would ever of your 
own free will deceive me! But I see now that 
I was mistaken, and apparently I must, as the 
saying goes, e’en make the best of what I can 
get, and take whatever you are pleased to grant 
me.” 

The questioning is now resumed, and soon 
the same conclusion follows which, with the 
help of Polus, was previously reached, that all 


| our actions have good, not pleasure, for their 
| end, and that we make choice of the latter only 


when we believe it likely to promote our good. 
To determine, however, which pleasures con- 
duce to good and which to evil, we need, as 
before stated, not the empirical knowledge of 
the mere experimenter, but the true and well- 
grounded knowledge of the expert. “ And, by 
the God of friendship,’ Socrates earnestly en- 
joins, “donot, Callicles, think yourself justified 
in trifling with me, or in giving hap-hazard an- 
swers contrary to your real belief, or in treating 
my words as a jest. For, as you can well see, 


GORGIAS. 79 


this discussion of ours is upon a subject which 
any man with the least sense must care for be- 
yond all others ; namely, the life we ought to 
live, whether that to which you exhort me, the 
life busied with those aforesaid ‘manly affairs,’ 
—speaking in the Assembly and practising ora- 
tory and engaging in public duties, as you con- 
ceive of them, —or the life spent in the pursuit 
of the philosophy, and wherein the one differs 
from the other.” 

Callicles is now reminded that medicine has 
already been described as able, from its knowl- 
edge of a patient’s constitution, to give a reason 
for all it does, fancy cookery on the contrary 
as ignorant of the nature of the very pleasure 
which it seeks to provide, and only able to guess 
at probabilities. And he is asked whether, in 
the same way, there are not pursuits which 
aim solely at the gratification of the soul, and 
which, therefore, deserve to be classed, together 
with those which cater to the body, under the 
one head of “flattery.” ‘Do you, Callicles,” is 
the conclusion, “agree with us in this opinion, 
or do you oppose it ?”’ 

“ Not I, forsooth ; I yield the point, that your 
argument may come to an end and also to 
oblige my friend Gorgias.” 

Socrates now enumerates certain pursuits 
which may be ranked as arts of flattery, amongst 
which are included dithyrambic poetry, flute- 
playing, and all kinds of musical contests. 


80 


GORGIAS. 


“Do you suppose,” he asks, “that Cinesias, the 
son of Meles, ponders how he can make his 
hearers better men, or does he think only how 
he may tickle the ears of the crowd?... Or was 
it, think you, with a view to the improvement 
of his audience that Meles, his father, used to 
perform upon the cithara? Nor was it for 
their pleasure even, for his music was a torture 
to all who heard it. . . . Turn we now to Trag- 
edy, the solemn and august. Does she care for 
the gratification of her hearers alone, or does 
she oppose it and never give utterance to any- 
thing, however pleasing, which may do them 
harm, but sing only of that which it shall profit 
them to hear, whether or not they find pleasure 
therein ?”’ 

From poetry to rhetoric or oratory the tran- 
sition is not difficult. Alike, in that both are 
addressed to mixed audiences of men, women, 
and children, with a view solely to the pleasure 
of the hour, the latter may be regarded as 
poetry only divested of melody and rhythm.® 
But here Callicles demurs, urging that although 
of some orators this may be true, others there 
are who truly care for the good of their fel- 
low-citizens. Challenged to bring forward an 
instance amongst those of the present day he 
finds himself at a loss, but when bidden to seek 
his example from the past he triumphantly ex- 
claims : — 

“What! Have you never heard how virtu- 


GORGIAS. 81 


ous a man was Themistocles ? and Cimon, and 
Miltiades, and our own Pericles, too, who died 
but lately ?®7 Why, you yourself have listened 
to him.” 

“Ves,” is the reply, “if to fulfil one’s own 
desires and those of others be virtue, as you 
said at first ; but if, as we have been forced to 
admit, there is an art which rightly discerns 
between those desires by the gratification of 
which men become better and those through 
which they become worse, which of these men 
can be said to have possessed it?” As Callicles 
confesses his inability to produce an instance, 
Socrates proposes that they search together for 
an example. The good orator, like the good 
workman, is one who sets before himself a cer- 
tain standard, a regular and perfect whole, to 
be attained. But to this end it is necessary 
that a certain order be preserved, and that each 
part be brought into harmony with every other 
part. ‘ Now what,” he continues, “is that 
which is brought about in the body by the prin- 
ciples of regularity and order?” 

“Health and strength I suppose you mean ?”’ 

“Tdo. And, now, again, what do these same 
principles bring about in the soul? Try to 
find out this and declare it as you did the 
other.” 

“Why don’t you declare it yourself, Soc- 
rates ?”’ 

“Oh, if you prefer it I will, of course. And 


82 


GORGIAS. 


if what I say seems right, do you assent to it; 
if not, do not let it pass, but refute it.” 

These principles, Socrates now declares, be- 
get in the soul law and lawfulness, which qual- 
ities, being none other than those of justice 
and temperance, it is the duty of the good and 
skilful statesman to implant in the souls of 
men, while he seeks to free them from self- 
indulgence and intemperance. ‘For is it not ‘ 
true,” he asks, “that when the body is diseased, 
the physician enjoins abstinence from things 
which a well man may enjoy with impunity ?’’] 


S. And is it not the same thing, good sir, 
with the soul? So long as she is yet in wicked- 
ness, being without intelligence or discipline or 
justice or holiness, she must be kept back per- 
force from her desires and suffered to do only 
such things as will make her better. Do you 
agree or not? 

GC. ido, 

S. For this, I presume, is best for the soul 
herself ? 5 

C. By all means. 

S. Andis not keeping her back from the 
things she desires disciplining her ? 

CY Ves 

S. To be disciplined, then, is better for the 
soul than to be without discipline ? 

C. I donot know what you are talking about, 


GORGIAS. 83 


Socrates. You had better ask some other 
person. 

S. Here is a man who cannot stand being 
benefited, and himself subjected to the very 
thing in question, — discipline. 

C. I care not a whit for any of the things 
you are talking about, and it is only to please 
Gorgias that I have answered you. 

S. Very good, but what are we to do now? 
Break off in the midst of the discussion ? 

C. You know best. | 

S. Well, they do say, you know, that it is 
not lawful to break off even stories in the midst, 
but that each should have a head upon it and 
not wander about headless.*® Pray then go on 
answering, that our argument may get a head. 

C. Oh, you are masterful enough, Socrates ; 
but if you take my advice you will let this dis- 
cussion alone, or pursue it with some one else. 

S. Who else then is willing? For we must 
not think of leaving the discussion unfinished. 

C. And can you not carry it through your- 
self, — either talking straight on, or else answer- 
ing your own questions ? 

S. Yes; that it may be with me as Epichar- 
mus said: ‘“ What erst two men affirmed, I must 
suffice for.” ® Well, I suppose it must needs 
be so. If, however, we do take this course, I 
think, for my part, that we ought all to vie one 
with the other to find out what is true and what 
is false in the questions, before us, since it is 


84 


GORGIAS. 


for the interest of all that this be made clear. 


506 I will therefore go on with the argument in the 


way that seems to me best; and if any one of 
you thinks that I am making concessions to 
myself which are not true, let him take the op- 
posite side and refute me. For what I say, I 
say not as if I were sure of it, nay, I am a 
fellow-searcher with you all, insomuch that if 
there seems to be anything in what my oppo- 
nent says, I shall be the first to yield the point. 
This I say, in case you think it best to have the 
argument carried on to its close; but if you do 
not care for this, we will let it go and take our 
way home. 

G. No, Socrates; it seems to me that we 
ought on no account to go away, but that you 
ought to stay and bring the argument to an end; 
and all the others, I think, are of the same 
mind. At all events, I myself am anxious to 
hear you go through the rest of it by yourself. 

S. I assure you, Gorgias, that I would gladly 


-have gone on talking with our friend Callicles 


until I had paid him back the speech of Am- 
phion in return for his of Zethus; but since 
you, Callicles, are not willing to join me in 
bringing thé discussion to an end, I beg that 
you will at least, as you listen, take me up if I 
say anything which you do not think right. 
And if you refute me I shall not get vexed 
with you as you do with me, but shall set you 
down as my greatest benefactor. 


GORGIAS. 85 


C. Speak on, my good fellow, by yourself, 
and get through with it. 


[506 C—s507 A The “dialogue with himself” Soc- 
rates opens with the recapitulation of sundry \ 
conclusions which have been already reached. 

Pleasure and good differ one from the other | 
in this respect,—that good may not be pur- , 
sued for the sake of pleasure, but iota for | 
the sake of good. | 

The goodness of every created thing is ‘Ga | 
to the indwelling of some virtue peculiar to | 
itself, which virtue is the result not of chance, | 
but of some order inherent to itself. 

The soul, therefore, which is governed by 
its own inherent order is better than the soul 
which follows no order. Now it is the soul 
governed by order which is temperate.*] 


507. And the temperate soul is good, is it not? I 
myself, dear Callicles, can find nothing to bring 
up against this, but if you can, pray teach it to 
me. 

C. Say on, my good fellow. 

S. I say, then, that if the temperate soul is 
good, then that which is the opposite of temper- 
ate— the intemperate and undisciplined soul — 


is bad. . Of course it is... . And surely 
the temperate man would fulfil his _duties to- 
oe ——— - 
Mas BA 


86 


GORG/AS. 


wards gods and men, for he would not be tem- 
perate if he let his duties go unfulfilled... . 
This must be so.... And in his dealings 


towards men he will do what is just, in those 


@ 


towards the gods what is holy; and he who 
does what is just and holy must of necessity 
himself be just and holy. ... Evenso.... 
And he must, moreover, be courageous, for it 
is the part of the temperate man not to fol- 
low after or fly before what he ought not, but 
what he ought, whether occupations or people 
or pleasures or pains, and patiently to endure 
wherever there is need. Necessarily, Callicles, 
therefore, the temperate man, being as we have 
described him, just and courageous and holy, is 
a perfectly good man; and the good man does 
well and honourably all that he does; and he 
who does well © is blessed and happy, while the 
wicked man and he who does evil is wretched ; 
and this were none other than the opposite of 
the temperate,— the man given to excess, whom 
you were praising. 

Such, then, is my position, and I maintain it 
to be the true one. And if it be true, then 
it would appear that he who wishes to be happy 
should follow after temperance and practise it, 
and that every man of us should flee from ex- 
cess, as fast as his feet will carry him; and 
that, above all things, he should so order him- 
self as not to require punishment; but yet if 
he himself or any one of his, whether private 


¢ 


508 


GORGIAS. 87 


person or city, stand in need of it, then justice 
and punishment must be dealt him, if he is ever 
to be happy. This, it seems to me, is the mark 
which a man ought to keep before him in his 
life, and to this end direct all his own efforts 
and those of the State, to the end that-he who 
hopes to be happy shall keep justice and tem- 
perance ever before him, and not let his de- 
sires go unrestrained, and, in the endeavor to 
fulfil them —a never-ending torment ® — lead 
the life of a robber. For such an one would 
be kindly affectioned neither towards any other 
man, nor towards God, for to him fellowship 
would be impossible; and to whom there is no 
fellowship, there can be no friendship either. 
The wise men, Callicles, tell us that heaven and 
earth, and gods and men are knit together in 
fellowship and friendship and order and temper- 
ance and justice ; whence it comes, my friend, 
that this whole universe bears the name of 
Cosmos (order), not that of disorder or license. 
But you, it seems to me, have paid no atten- 
tion to these things, and, for all your being 
so clever, it has escaped your notice that geo- 
metrical equality can do great things among 
gods and men alike; for you care nothing about 
geometry, but believe, on the contrary, that a 
love of gain or inequality ought to be encour- 
aged. Very well; either this theory of ours 
must be refuted, that by the possession of jus- 
tice and temperance the happy are made happy 


88 


GORGIAS. 


and by the possession of evil the wretched are 
made miserable, or, if it be true, we must see 
what are its results. The very same, Callicles, 
concerning which you asked me whether I was 
in earnest in saying that a man ought to accuse 
himself and his son and his friend, if any of 
them commit an injury, and that rhetoric must 
be used to this end. And so, what you imag- 
ined Polus to have conceded out of false shame 
turns out to have been true after all, that to 
inflict an injury is as much more disastrous as 
it is more disgraceful than to suffer one, and 
that he who wishes to be a true rhetorician 
must be just and understand about justice, 
which again is what Polus accuses Gorgias of 
having conceded out of false shame. 

This being the state of the case, let us see 
what this reproach of yours amounts to, and 
whether or not you are right in saying that lam 
unable to help either myself or any of my friends 
or kinsfolk or to save them from the greatest 
dangers, and that, like the outlaws with whom 
any one may do as he chooses, I am at the 
mercy of everybody’s will; whether that be, 
to use your own energetic expression, to slap 
me in the face or take away my possessions or 
drive me out of the city or even inflict the last 
of penalties, death, which is, according to you, 
the greatest disgrace of all. But, as for myself, 
Callicles, — and although this has been said 
many times already, it will still bear repeating, 


509 


GORGJAS. 89 


—JI maintain that to be slapped in the face 
without just cause is not the greatest disgrace, 
—no, nor to have my body cut nor my purse- 
strings either,— but that to strike or wound me 
or mine without just cause is worse and more 
disgraceful besides ; and that to steal from me, 
withal, and to enslave me and break into my 
house, in short, to commit any kind of unjust 
action upon me or mine, is a worse thing and 
a more disgraceful to him who commits the in- 
jury than to me who suffers it. These truths, 
which were brought out in the first part of our 
conversation just as I now declare them, are 
clinched and riveted, if I may be pardoned 
such an extravagant expression, by arguments 
of iron and adamant, —at least, so they would 
appear,—and unless you or some one still more 
energetic than yourself shall succeed in break- 
ing them, nothing contrary to what I now say 
can be said with truth. I, for my part, have 
always said the same thing, —that I do not, 
indeed, know the truth as to these matters, but 
that of all those I have ever met on previous 
occasions, as at present, there is none who can 
say anything different from this without mak- 
ing himself ridiculous. 


[509B-511 A Now, so the argument goes on, if 


there be really these two evils, that of suffer- 
ing injustice and that of committing it, and if 


GORGIAS. 


there be any help at hand whereby they may 
be avoided, that man is indeed foolish who does 
not avail himself of it. 

In respect to suffering injustice, Callicles 
readily agrees that whatever “help” there is 
must consist in more than the wish, namely, 
in the power to avoid it. But to the proposition 
that the same is true of committing injustice 
he will apparently neither give nor withhold his 
assent until urged by Socrates as follows :— 

“ Will you not even tell me, Callicles, whether 
you think Polus and I were right in letting our- 
selves be forced into the acknowledgment that 
no one wishes to commit injustice, but that all 
who do so, do it against their will ?”’ 

‘Be it so, Socrates, if you wish,” is the re- 
ply, “anything to get through the discussion.” 

The most effectual “help” against injustice 
is soon discovered to be either to obtain abso- 
lute power for one’s. self, or to become the 
friend and associate of one possessed of this 
power. Well pleased, Callicles exclaims : — 

“Don’t you see, Socrates, how ready I am to 
give you praise whenever you say anything 
good? This I regard as uncommonly well 
said.”’ 

“Then see,” Socrates remarks, ‘ whether 
you approve of this also. 

* On the principle of ‘ like to like’ laid down 
by wise men of yore, the brutal and ignorant 
ruler selects as his friend not one superior to 


GORG/AS. gI 


himself, whom he must needs hold in awe, nor 
again one greatly his inferior, whom he de- 
spises, but rather one who, possessing the same 
tastes with himself, will the more readily sub- 
mit to his guidance. Hence, any youth who is 
seeking how he may best acquire power and es- 
cape injury should cultivate the same tastes 
with the tyrant, his lord and master, and imi- 
tate him by committing every possible injustice 
and avoiding punishment, which imitation will 
surely result in the greatest evil that could be- 
fall him — the depravity and corruption of his 
soul.” 
Here Callicles indignantly exclaims : —] 


C. I cannot conceive, Socrates, how it is 
that you always manage to twist the argument 
upside down. Do you not know that this im- 
itator, as you call him, will, if he choose, put to 
death the man who does not imitate him, and 
will take away from him all that he has? 

S. I must know, good Callicles, unless I am 
deaf, for I have heard it over and over again of 
late, both from you, and from Polus, and in fact 
from almost everybody else in the city. But 
now listen to what I have to say. Kill him, 
he may, indeed, if he choose; but he will still 
be the wicked man, the other the pure and up- 
right one. 

C. And is not that just the vexatious part 
of it 7% 


92 


GORGIAS. 


S. Not to any one of sense, as our argu- 
ment’ shows. Or do you think that a man 
ought to be planning how he may live the long- 
est life, and cultivating those arts which are 
sure to save us from dangers, like, for in- 
stance, this art of rhetoric, which you bid me 
cultivate because it brings one safely through 
the law courts? 

C. Yes, by Zeus, and it is good advice that 
I give you? 

S. And how, esteemed sir, about the art of 
swimming; do you look upon that as a very 
wonderful thing ? 

C. Not I, by Zeus. 

S. And yet that too saves men from death 
when they find themselves in any predicament 
where this art is necessary. Or if you think 
the example too trifling I will give you a more 
important one, the art of seamanship, which 
saves not only the lives of men but their bodies 
and possessions also from the uttermost dan- 
gers, just as rhetoric does. Yet for all that, it 
is modest and unpretentious, and does not give 
itself airs nor assume the attitude of having ac- 
complished some transcendent act. But, al- 
though it brings to pass just what the art of 
the pleader does, it charges, I think, only two 
obols 6 for conveying a man hither in safety 
from AZgina; and as the largest price of the 
great service of conveying safely all that I just 
mentioned, a man himself and his children and 


512 


GORGIAS. 93 


possessions and womenkind, from Egypt or 
Pontus, and landing them in the harbour, it 
charges just two drachmas ; and he who pos- 
sesses the art in question and has effected all 
this gets out and walks along the seashore by 
the side of his ship with full modest bearing. 
For he knows, I presume, that he must take 
into account how uncertain it is which of his 
passengers he has benefited by not letting them 
be drowned and which of them he has injured, 
being aware that they are no whit better either 
in body or soul when they disembark than 
when they went on board. And so he reasons 
thus: if it be true that a man with great and 
incurable bodily diseases who escapes drown- 
ing is wretched only in that he has not died, 
and has nothing to be grateful for, it cannot be 
that when that which is more precious than the 
body, — the soul, — is a prey to many and in- 
curable diseases, he ought to go on living, and 
that one would do him any service in rescuing 
him from the sea or from the law court or from 
any other peril whatever. No, indeed; he knows 
that for the wicked man it is better not to live 
at all, since he must needs live ill.® 

It is for this reason that the pilot is not wont 
to put on airs even though he does save our 
lives; no, my friend, nor the engineer either, 
though there are times when he is second 
neither to the general nor to the pilot even, nor 


indeed to any one at all in ability to save, for 


94 


GORGIJAS. 


he has been known to save whole cities. You 
do not think him on a level with the lawyer, do 
you? And yet, Callicles, if he cared to talk 
and boast of his profession, as you others do, he 
might well overwhelm you with his talk, urging 
and enjoining upon you the duty of becoming 
engineers, as if nothing else were of any ac- 
count; for he has plenty to say for himself. 
None the less, however, do you look down upon 
him and this art of his, and, by way of reproach, 
you dub him “maker of machines,’ and you 
would never consent to give your daughter in 
marriage to his son or to accept his daughter 
for yours. And yet, judging from the reasons 
for which you praise your own profession, what 
right have you to look down upon the engineer 
and the others I have just named?, I know 
you would say that you are a better man, and 
come of better stock. But if the better is not 
what I declare it to be, and if virtue consists 
only in saving yourself and your possessions, 
whatever manner of man you may be, your con- 
demnation of the engineer and of the doctor 
and of all the other arts invented for safety be- 
comes ridiculous. Nay, my good friend, but 
consider whether the high and noble thing be 
not something besides saving and being saved. 
Surely he who is a true man ought not to con- 
sider whether his life is to last any special time, 
nor indeed to love life at all; but, leaving all 
care of this to God, and believing with the 


513 


GORGIAS. 95 


women that no man may escape his destiny, 
he should examine how he may best live the 
time he has yet to live ®* — whether by making 
himself like that government under which he 
happens to live, just as it now behooves you to 
become as like the people of Athens as possible, 
if you would be beloved of them and acquire 
great power in the State. See to it, my good 
sir, whether this will profit you and myself as 
well, that we do not fare like those women of 
Thessaly who they say draw the moon down 
from heaven; ® for the choice we make of 
power in the State will involve our dearest in- 
terests. But if you imagine that any mortal 
man can impart to you such an art as shall 
enable you to acquire great power in this city 
and yet remain unlike its governing body, 
whether for better or for worse, you are, Cal- 
licles, it seems to me, not rightly advised. For 
not only their imitator but of like nature with 
them must you be, if you intend to have any 
real friendship with the Demus of Athens or 
with Demus the son of Pyrilampes either, by 
Zeus. He, then, who will bring about the 
closest likeness between you and them, he it 
is who will make you a statesman, in the sense 
in which you aspire to be a statesman, and a 
rhetorician. For every one is delighted when 
words are spoken which agree with his own 
character, and displeased when they are of a 
nature foreign to it. But perhaps you are of 


96 GORGIAS. 


another mind, my dear fellow. Have we any- 
thing to say about all this, Callicles ? 

C. I know not, Socrates, how it is that you 
seem tome intheright. But still I share the 
feeling of most men; I am not altogether con- 
vinced by what you say. 

S. Because the love of Demus, Callicles, 
which is within your own soul stands out against 
me. I doubt not, however, that if we return to 
these questions and look into them more care- 
fully you will be convinced. 


[513 D—515 D Again, acontrast is drawn between 
the training which aims at self-gratification and 
has been described as a “flattery,” and that 
which has in view the moral improvement of 
the person ministered to, ability to effect which 
is the only test of fitness for office. “ For, 
surely, Callicles,’ Socrates urges, “if we two 
were about to assume charge of some public 
work, we should begin by ascertaining, one 
from the other, whether we had acquired a 
practical knowledge of the art of building and 
from whom, and whether any previous work un- 
dertaken by us had been successful and we our- 
selves were capable of assuming charge without 
the supervision of our masters. Or, again, if 
we were candidates for the office of state physi- 
cian you would assuredly ask: ‘And how is it 
with Socrates himself as to bodily health? Or 


GORGIAS. 97 


is there any one else, either free man or slave, 
who has ever been cured of disease by Socra- 
tes?’ And if the answer were to prove unsat- 
isfactory, then, by Zeus, Callicles, it would be 
the very height of folly for people like our- 
selves, who had never before, even in private, 
practiced the art, to set up as public physicians, 
and to begin, as the saying has it, ‘with the 
wine jar to learn the potter’s art?’7° And so 
now, Callicles, seeing that you yourself are en- 
tering upon public life, and seeing that you find 
fault with me for not doing likewise, let us each 
see how it is with one another. Is there any 
one, whether citizen or foreigner, free man or 
slave, who from being bad, unjust, licentious, 
and unrestrained, has through Callicles become 
good and upright?” Again Callicles tries to 
avoid coming to the point, and exclaims : —] 


C. You are trying to pick a quarrel with 
me, Socrates. 

S. No, I assure you I am questioning in no 
such spirit, but only from an earnest wish to 
know how you think our city ought to be ad- 
ministered, whether, that is, in entering upon 
public affairs, you intend devoting yourself to 
anything but to make us as good citizens as pos- | 
sible ? Have we not several times already con- 
fessed that this is the duty of the statesman ? 
Have we confessed it or have we not? Answer 


98 


GORGIAS. 


me. Very well, I will answer for you: we have. 
If this, then, is what it is the good man’s duty 
to bring about in his own city, do me the favour 
to recall the men you’ mentioned a while ago, 
and to tell me if you still hold them to have 
been good citizens. I mean Pericles and Cimon 
and Miltiades and Themistocles. 

G.) ide. 

S. Then if they were good, they of course, 
each one of them, changed their fellow citizens 
from worse to better. Did they do this or not ? 

C. They did. 

S. Consequently the people of Athens, 
when Pericles first addressed them, were worse 
than when he spoke at the last ? 

C. Probably. 

S. Not probably at all, esteemed sir, but 
necessarily, by our own confession ; that is to 
say, if he was a good citizen. 

C. What has that to do with it? 

S. Nothing; only just tell me this, whether 
the Athenians are said to have been made bet- 
ter by Pericles, or, on the contrary, to have 
been corrupted by him; for I do hear that 
Pericles, who first instituted serving for hire, 
made of the Athenians a lazy, cowardly, gar- 
rulous, covetous set of men. 

C. It is from the company of the bruised 
ears, Socrates, that you hear this.% 

S. But I not only hear, I know for a cer- 
tainty, and so do you, that in the beginning 


516 


GORGJAS. 99 


Pericles was held in high esteem, and that the 
Athenians, while they were as yet worse men, 
found him by no means worthy of a disgraceful 
sentence. Yet at the close of. Pericles’ life, af- 
ter he had made them good and upright citi- 
zens,-they found him guilty of fraud and came 
very near sentencing him to death, evidently 
regarding him as a sorry fellow.” 

C. Well, what if they did? Does this make 
Pericles a bad man? 

S. Surely aman of this sort who had charge 
of asses and horses and oxen would be ac- 
counted a bad guardian, if the animals when he 
assumed charge of them were not addicted to 
kicking or butting or biting, but grew so wild 
under his guardianship that they developed 
these habits ; or perhaps you do not regard a 
man as a bad guardian of animals of any kind 
if, although hitherto gentle, they have become 
wilder under his guardianship. Do you or do 
you not? 

C. Well, yes, to oblige you. 

S. Will you oblige me further by answering 
me whether man is or is not one of the animals ? 

C. Of course he is. 

S. And it was men that Pericles had under 
his charge, was it not? 

Go Wes: 

S. Well then, as we agreed just now, must 
they not needs have been made more just by 
him instead of less just, if he had cared for 
them as a good statesman ought ? 


100 


GORGIAS. 


C. Yes, of course. 

S. And are not just men, as Homer said, 
quiet and gentle? 8 What say you? Is it not so? 

‘erat fa | : 

S. Whereas, when he had done with them 
they were wilder than when he took them in 
charge, and this towards himself, which was the 
last thing he could have wished. 

C. Do you wish me to agree with you? 

S. If you think what I say true. ) 

C. Well, be it so. 

S. And if wilder, then worse and more un- 
just. 

B70 be it: 

S. According to this view, then, Pericles 
was not a good statesman. 

C. You say not. 

S. And so do you, from all you have ad- 
mitted. But tell me again about Cimon. Did 
not those who were under his care ostracize 
him, that they might not hear the sound of his 
voice for ten years? And did they not do the 
same to Themistocles, and moreover sentence 
him to exile? And Miltiades, the hero of Mar- 
athon, they voted to have cast into the pit, and 
would he not have been thrown into it, had it 
not been for the presiding officer?“ And yet 
if these had been good men, as you say they 
were, they would never have suffered such 
things. Surely, skilful chariot-drivers do ‘net 
escape a tumble from their chariots in the be; 


GORGIAS. IO! 


ginning, only to get thrown out after they have 
got their horses well in hand and have them- 
selves become better drivers. That is not the 
way either with chariot-driving or any other 
employment, do you think it is? 

C. No, I do not. 

S. Apparently, then, what we said at first 

517 is true,—not a single man do we know who 
has ever been a good statesman in this city. 
‘This you admitted of men at the present day, 
C but you denied it of a former age, and brought 
yp these men as examples; whereas it now ap- 
</pears that they are but on a level with our 
own statesmen, so that if they really were rhet- 
Oricians it was not the true art of rhetoric that 
they used, no, nor the flattering kind either, or 
they would not have had such a fall. 

C. And yet, Socrates, there is not a man of 
the present day who is not a long way from 
performing such acts as were performed by any 
one of these you choose to name. 

S. My dear fellow, I am not blaming them, 
at least not as servants of the State; on the 
contrary, I regard them as more serviceable 
than those of the present day, and better able 
to fulfil the desires of the State. Nevertheless, 
in the matter of not giving way to those de- 
sires but changing the bent of them, and using 
force and persuasion alike, to the end that the 
citizens be made better, they in no wise, so to 

_ speak, differed from those of to-day ; and yet this 


102 GORGIAS. 


is the sole business of a good citizen. So far, 
indeed, as ships are concerned, and walls and 
harbours and all that sort of thing, they were, 
I grant you, more skilful in supplying these. 
But here we are, you and I, making a ridiculous 
business out of our discussion ; for all the time 
that we talk we are always coming back again 
to the same point, and each misunderstanding 
what the other says. 


[517 D-—518 A Socrates now refers again to his 
favourite analogy of the body and the soul. 
The care of the body, he declares, is of two 
kinds, the one ministering to and. humouring 
its desires, as do the so-called arts of the cook, 
the weaver, the shoemaker ; the other assum- 
ing control of these inferior and slavish arts and 
using them only so far as they conduce to the 
real good of the body, being enabled so to do 
from its own knowledge of their effect for good 
or for evil. ] 


S. Now when I assert that the same is 
true of the soul, you seem at the time to un- 
derstand, and you assent as if you grasped my 
meaning, and then a little while after you 
come and tell me that our city has had good 
and upright citizens; and when I ask you to 
name them, you bring up, it seems to me, just 


GORGIAS. (103 


the same kind of men as if when I had asked 
you who have been or who are the best trainers 
of the body you were to tell me, in all serious- 
ness, that Thearion the baker, and Mithaecus 
who wrote the Sicilian cook-book, and Saram- 
bus the vintner, are all three wonderful trainers 
of the body, because, forsooth, they understand 
producing, the first bread, the second fancy 
dishes, and the third wine.” 

And I dare say, Callicles, you would have 
been offended if I had said to you: Man, you 
know nothing at all about gymnastics; the 
fellows of whom you prate to me are but stew- 
ards and caterers to the appetites, who have no 
high and noble ideas concerning even these, but 
after they have fattened, as it may be, and 
stuffed men’s bodies, and received praise of 
them, will end by making them lose even the 
flesh they had before. Owing to their inexpe- 
rience, however, the sufferers will not attribute 
their diseases and the falling off of their former 
flesh to the feast-givers ; but those who happen 
to be near them and to be their advisers at 
some later time when this process of stuffing, 
carried on regardless of health, has brought dis- 
ease upon them, these they will censure, and if 
they can, they will do them harm; while the 
others, the true cause of their troubles, they 
will warmly praise. And you, Callicles, are do- 
ing very much the same thing now; you praise 
the men who have feasted our citizens and re- 


104 


519 


GORGJAS. 


galed them with all they desire ; and every one 
says that it is they who have made the city 
great, not perceiving that through these very 
men of the past it has become swollen and cor- 
rupt. For, without caring for temperance and 
justice, they have filled the city with harbours, 
and docks, and walls, and tribute-money, and 
all such nonsense ; and then when a sudden at- 
tack of disease has come upon them they fall to 
blaming the councillors of the day, while they 
praise Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, 
the real authors of their troubles. And you, 
too, they will attack, if you do not take care, 
and my friend Alcibiades as well,“ when they 
find themselves losing not only what they have 
lately acquired, but even that which they for- 
merly possessed ; and, although you were not 
the cause of their misfortunes, you may have 
helped to bring them about. 

One very absurd thing withal occurs to-day, 
as it did amongst men of the past. When the 
city deals with one of these statesmen as a 
criminal, I notice that every one is full of pro- 
testations and complaints, for all the world as if 
they were suffering terrible things. “ After 
rendering the city such good and numerous set- 
vices, that their ruin should be brought about 
thus unjustly by her !””— such is the burden of 
their song. But the whole thing is false. There 
never yet was a guardian of a city whose ruin 
could be unjustly brought about by the very 


GORGIAS.. 105 


city which’ was under his guardianship. And 
with the Sophists it is much the same as with 
those who pretend to be statesmen. For the 
Sophists, although clever in other respects, do 
this strange thing; they call themselves teach- 
ers of virtue, and yet they are always accusing 
their pupils of treating them unjustly, by keep- 
ing back their pay and not even returning them 
thanks for all the good they have done them. 
Now what: could be more absurd than the no- 
tion that men who have been made good and 
just, whose injustice, indeed, has been taken 
away by their teacher and justice put in its 
place, can commit injustice by means of that 
which is no longer in them? Does not this 
strike you as absurd, my friend? Really, Cal- 
licles, by your unwillingness to answer you 
have forced me into making a speech. 

C. And you are the man who could not talk 
unless he could get some one to answer him ! 

S. So it seems; certainly I have talked long 
enough on this occasion, on account of your not 
being willing to answer me. But tell me in the 
name of friendship, good sir, do you not think 
it unreasonable that any one should claim to 
have made another man good, and then, after 
the man has been made good by him and still 
continues so, should accuse him of being bad? 

C. Yes, I do think so. 

S. Well, do you not hear those who profess 
to instruct other men in virtue saying such 
things ? 


106 GORGIAS. 


520 C. Yes, but why should you talk of men who 
are of no account? 


[520 A-—521A In reply, Socrates begs to know 
wherein the difference lies between the So- 
phists, spoken of by Callicles with such con- 
tempt, and the rhetoricians, who, after announ- 
cing that as guardians of the city they make 
the improvement of the citizens their chief 
care, proceed to disclaim all responsibility in 
the evil actions of their wards. Again taking 
up the comparison already drawn * between 
the sophistic and rhetorical arts, wherein the 
one is likened to legislative, the other to ad- 
ministrative justice, he declares the former to 
be superior to the latter in the same degree 
that the art of the trainer is superior to that 
of the physician, — the latter working only. 
cure, the former prevention. In one respect, 
however, the two are identical, — both profess 
to take away even the capacity for injustice, 
whereby they differ from all the other arts. 
They, for example, who follow the profession of 
training, though they profess to impart swift- 
ness of foot, do not pretend to increase their 
pupils’ sense of justice, and these, therefore, do 
rightly in stipulating beforehand for proper rec- 
ompense. But those whose profession it is to 
make other men just ought surely to have no 


* See page 26. 


521 


GORGIAS. 107 


doubt that those under their care will act in all 
things with honour and liberality. 

Socrates now returns to the main question at 
issue and asks :—] 


S. Well, to which service of the State do 
you invite me—define me that. Am I to play 
the part of the physician and exert myself to 
make the Athenians as good as possible, or that 
of a servant and minister to their pleasure? 
Tell me the truth, Callicles, for it is but fair 
that, having begun by opposing me so boldly, 
you should finish all that is in your mind to say. 
Speak out then now, freely and frankly. 

C. Very well; I say that of one who will 
minister to them. 

S. What, most high-minded sir, you invite 
me to become a flatterer ! 

C. Ora Mysian, if you prefer to call it that, 
Socrates ;7 for unless you do all this — 

S. Now do not tell me what you have said 
so many times already, that any one who desires 
will bring about my death, lest I in my turn 
declare that this will be a bad man killing a 
good one; and do not tell me either that he 
will take away my possessions, if I have any, 
lest I declare that even if he does take them 
away he will get no good from them; for as he 
came by them unjustly, so will he use them un- 
justly; and if unjustly, then disgracefully ; and 
if disgracefully, then hurtfully. 


108 


GORGIAS. 


C. How confident you seem, Socrates, that 
you yourself will never suffer any of these 
things! just as if you dwelt in a world apart, 
and may not very likely be brought into a court 
of law by some wretched and good-for-nothing 
fellow. 

S. I am a fool, Callicles, in very truth, if I 
do not believe that any one in this city, whoso- 
ever he be, may suffer this fate. But well I 
know also that if I ever appear before a court 
of justice and am in danger of any of the evils 
you name, it will be a bad man who accuses 
me; for no good man would accuse an innocent 
one. And if I were to suffer death it were no 
strange thing. Shall I tell you why I look for 
this ? 

C. Pray do. 

S. I believe myself to be one among a very 
few, if not the only one of the Athenians who 
attempts the true art of politics, and the only 
man of the present day who practises states- 
manship. Seeing, then, that itis not with a-view 
to gratifying my fellow-citizens, not for their 
pleasure but for their good that I say what I 
am in the habit of saying, and seeing that I am 
not willing to adopt all these subtle devices 
which you recommend, I shall have nothing at 
all to say in the court of justice. It will be 
with me as I told Polus, —I shall be judged 
just as a physician would be judged if he were 
brought before a court of little boys on a charge 


522 


GORGIAS. 109 


preferred by a pastry cook. Only consider what 
such a physician would plead in his own defence 
before such judges, were some one to accuse 
him, saying: “My boys, many and great are 
the evils which this man has wrought upon 
you; the very youngest of you he disables by 
means of the knife and of cautery, and drives 
you to extremities by parching and suffocation, 
giving you the bitterest potions and compelling 
you to endure hunger and thirst; not like my- 
self who have feasted you upon every variety of 
good things.” What, think you, would a physi- 
cian caught in such evil plight have to say for 
himself? Or if he were to speak the truth and 
say: “All this, my boys, I did for your health’s 
sake,” what kind of clamour do you suppose 
such judges as these would raise? A mighty 
one, would they not ? 

C. Very likely. At least one must suppose 
SO. 

S. Do you not suppose he would be in great 
straits to know what to say ? 

C. Of course he would. 

S. And well I know that were I to appear 
in a court of justice, I should have just such an 
experience as this. For I shall have no pleas- 
ures to bring up as having provided for them, 
which are what they account good services and 
benefits, though I for my part envy neither 
those who provide such things nor those for 
whom they are provided. And if any one as- 


IIo 


GORGTJAS. 


serts that I ruin the young by driving them to 
extremities, or that I ill-treat the old by using 
harsh words to them, whether in private or 
public, there will be no use in telling him the 
truth, that “I am right in saying all that I do 
say,” and that “Jam working for your interest, 
O my judges,” or in saying anything else at 
all.”8 So that I must, in all probability, submit 
myself to my fate, whatever it may be. 

C. And so you think, Socrates, do you, that 
a man is well off who, in any city, meets with 
such a fate as this, and is powerless to help 
himself ? 

S. Yes, Callicles, if it be with him as you 
have several times admitted it is, if he has 
helped himself by never either speaking or do- 
ing anything unjust towards either gods or men. 
For this, as we have many times agreed, is the 
best possible help he can render himself. If, 
then, any one were to convict me of incapacity 
to render this help to myself or to another, I 
should be ashamed, whether I were convicted 
before a few or many judges or by myself alone; 
and if I were to die on account of this incapac- 
ity, I should be distressed. But if I were to 
meet my end from want of proficiency in rhet- 
oric of the flattering kind, right sure I am that 
you would behold me bearing death with all 
cheerfulness. For the mere matter of dying no 
one fears, unless it be some one utterly devoid 
of reason and manliness; what a man fears is 


523 


GORGIAS. IIft 


to act unjustly.? For to arrive in the world be- 
low with a load of foul deeds upon the soul is 


of all evils the uttermost. In proof of which, 


if you will permit me, I will tell you a story. 

C. Well, since you have gone through the 
rest, you might as well finish this too» 

S. Hearken, then, as the saying goes, to a 
right noble story. To you, I dare say, it may 


' appear as a fairy tale, but to me it is not so, 


for what I am about to tell you I tell you as 
the truth. As Homer tells us, when Zeus and 
Poseidon and Pluto had inherited the dominion 
from their father, they divided it between them- 
selves. Now amongst the gods, there was in 
the time of Cronos, and has been ever since 
to our own day, this law in respect to men, 
that he who has passed his life in justice and 
piety shall depart, when he comes to die, to the 
Happy Isles, and there dwell in all blessedness, 
beyond the reach of ill ; while he whose life has 
been unjust and impious shall go to the prison- 
house of retribution and punishment which 
men call Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, 
nay, still later under the rule of Zeus, they who 
sat in judgment were alive, and those they tried 
were living men, for the trial took place upon 
the same day that it was appointed them to 
die; and thus the judgments were wrongly 
awarded. Whereupon, Pluto and the guard- 
ians of the Happy Isles went to Zeus with the 
complaint that the wrong men constantly found 


112 


GORGIAS. 


their way to either place. Then spake Zeus: 
“‘T will make an end to this,” quoth he; “the 
judgments are now wrongly given, because 
when the trial takes place, they who are tried 
are wrapped about in their clothing ; for they are 
tried while still alive. And there are many,” 
he said, ‘ whose souls are evil, and who are yet 
clothed in fair bodies and in pride of birth and 
riches, and who, moreover, at the trial pro- 
duce witnesses to testify that they have lived 
righteous lives. Now all this imposes’ upon 
the judges, and then, too, they themselves give 
judgment with their clothing all about them, 
eyes, ears, and the whole body covering their 
soul as a veil; all which, namely, their own 
clothing and that of the persons to be judged, 
is a hindrance to them. In the first place, 
then,” said he, “there must be an end to their 
foreknowledge of death, for now they know its 
approach. Wherefore I have already laid my 
command upon Prometheus that he make an end 
of this knowledge.®! In the second place, before 
they are tried they must be already stripped of 
all these coverings; for the trial must take 
place after they are dead. And the judge must 
be stripped also and he himself be dead, his 
very soul looking upon the very soul of each 
man the instant he has died, bereft of all kins- 
folk and having left behind upon the earth 
that glamour of which we spoke; that the sen- 
tence may be a just one. Now, I, perceiving 


GORGIAS. — 113 


all this before you did, have already appointed 
as judges my own sons, two from Asia, Minos 
and Rhadamanthus, and .one from Europe, 

524 Aeacus.® These, therefore, so soon as they 
are dead shall sit in judgment in the meadow 
at the three cross-roads whence lead the two 
paths, the one to the Happy Isles, the other to 
Tartarus. And those from Asia shall be judged 
by Rhadamanthus, those from Europe by Aea- 
cus. But upon Minos I will confer the dignity 
of deciding as umpire whenever the other two 
are in any doubt ; that the sentence which con- 
cerns the last journey of man may as far as pos- 
sible be just.” 

This, Callicles, is what I have heard and be- 
lieve to be true, and from these stories I gather 
some such inference as this. Death, as it seems 
to me, is nothing but the separation from one 
another of two things, the soul and the body.® 
And after their separation one from the other, 
each retains none the less its own nature, the 
same that it had when the man was yet alive, 
the body its own character and habits and expe- 
riences, which are all plainly to be discerned, 
insomuch that if the living man, whether from 
nature or breeding or both, had a large body, 
just so large is his body after he is dead; and if 
he was fat when alive, then after death he is 
fat also, and so of every other condition; or 
again, if he was in the habit of wearing his hair 
long, in death also he will have long hair.® 


114 


525 


GORGIAS. 


Again, if in life he was some worthless fel- 
low whose body was scarred with stripes, traces 
of the scourge or of other wounds, the same 
are to be seen upon his body when he is dead. 
And if while he was yet alive his limbs were 
broken or distorted, all this is visible after 
death. In a word, whatever aspect the body 
presented during life, it presents the same, in 
most if not in all respects, for a certain time 
after death. Now I hold, Callicles, that the 
same is true of the soul. No sooner is it stripped 
of the body than all its qualities are made mani- 
fest, those which were a part of its nature as 
well as those brought about in the man’s soul 
by the conduct of his life. Accordingly, when 
they arrive in the presence of the judge, those 
from Asia, for example, in the presence of 
Rhadamanthus, he places them before him and 
looks into each man’s soul. Whose it is he 
knows not, but oftentimes when it is the soul 
of the Great King or of some other monarch or 
potentate that he has laid hands upon, he per- 
ceives that in it there is no soundness at all, 
but that it is all marked by the scourge and 
covered with the scars that come of perjury 
and injustice, ——the foul marks which its own 
evil acts have left imprinted upon the soul, — 
and by reason of vainglory and deceit it is 
crooked in every part, and because it was never 
trained in truth there is no straightness in it. 
He sees, moreover, that the soul, by reason of 


GORGIAS. II5 


wantonness and license and pride and inconti- 
nence, is full of disproportion and ugliness; 
and beholding all this he straightway sends it 
off, laden with dishonour, to the place of im- | 
prisonment, where it must endure the ‘suffer- 
ings that are its due. 

Now every one who suffers punishment, if 
the punishment has been rightly dealt him by 
another, must needs either himself be made bet- 
ter and thus benefited thereby, or else serve as 
an example to others, that they, seeing the suf- 
ferings which he endures, may be made better 
through dread of them. And those who are 
benefited by receiving punishment from gods 
and men are they who have committed sins 
not past cure; nevertheless, both here and in 
Hades, only through pain and suffering does 
the benefit come to them, for there is no other 
way whereby they may be set free from injus- 
tice. But those who have committed the 
greatest crimes, and who are, by reason of 
these, past cure, are set up as examples; and 
although, because they are incurable, they are 
no longer capable of deriving any benefit them- 
selves, other men are benefited who behold 
them enduring for all time the greatest, the 
most grievous, and the most fearful torments, 
on account of their sins, hung up as warnings 
in the prison-house of Hades below, to serve as 
a spectacle and a caution to the wicked who are 
constantly arriving there. And I tell you that 


116 


GORGTAS. 


among them Archelaus too will be, if what 
Polus says of him is true, and likewise any 
other tyrant of his stamp. It seems to me, in- 
deed, that these examples for our warning are 
for the most part taken from among the tyrants 
and kings and powerful of the earth and such 
as have to do with affairs of state ; for these men, 
in virtue of their authority, commit the great- 
est and most unholy crimes.” To this Homer 
bears witness ; for he has described those who 
suffer punishment for all time in the world be- 


. low as kings and potentates,— like Tantalus 


526 


and Sisyphus and Tityus.*8 But Thersites, on 
the other hand, or any other bad man who was 
a commoner, no one has described as visited by 
the direst punishments because he was incura- 
ble; for he had not, I take it, the power, and 
so he was more fortunate than they who had it. 
No, Callicles, it is amongst the powerful of the 
earth that the men of surpassing wickedness are 
found, although there is no reason why good 
men should not be found there too, and such 
as these are all worthy of admiration ; for it is 
a hard thing, Callicles, and deserving of great 
praise for a man to have full power to act un- 
justly and yet live his life aright. Few, in- 
deed, are the men of this stamp; but still there 
have been now and again, and will, I believe, 
yet be good and noble men who possess in its 
perfection this virtue of rightly dealing with 
whatever may have been entrusted to them. 


GORGIAS. 117 


One there is, indeed, who has gained much re- 
nown amongst all the other Greek peoples, — 
Aristides, the son of Lysimachus.* But for the 
most part, my friend, the powerful of the earth 
are found to be wicked. 

As I was saying, however, Rhadamanthus, 
when he lays hands upon one of this sort, knows 
nothing further about him, neither who he is, 
nor what was his birth, nought indeed save that 
he is wicked. And when he perceives this he 
sends him away to Tartarus, having first set 
upon him a mark to show whether he is curable 
or past cure; and when he has arrived there 
he suffers such things as he deserves. Again, 
Rhadamanthus sees before him a soul of an- 
other sort, the soul of a man who has lived in 
all truth and holiness, whether in private life 
or otherwise, — especially, Callicles, let me tell 
you, one who has lived as a philosopher and 
busied himself with his own affairs, not with 
outside matters, — and then he is well pleased, 
and him he sends away to the Happy Isles. In 
like manner does Aeacus ; and these both give: 
judgment rod in hand; while Minos sits apart 
and has the whole in charge, he alone bearing 
a golden sceptre, just as Odysseus in Homer 
speaks of seeing him : — 

“ Bearing a golden sceptre, and ruling o’er the dead.” 
Now for myself, Callicles, I am persuaded of 
the truth of these stories, and I study how I 
may present my soul before the judge whole 


118 


527 


GORGIAS. 


and undefiled; and so, bidding farewell to 
those things which most men account honours 
and looking onward to the Truth, I shall ear- 
nestly endeavour to grow so far as may be in 
goodness, and thus live, and thus, when the 
time comes, die. 

And, to the best of my power, I exhort all 
other men also; and you especially, in my turn, 
I exhort to this life and this contest, which is, I 
protest, far above all contests here. And upon 
you I cast the reproach that you will not be 
able to save yourself when you come to that 
trial and that judgment of which I have just 
spoken, but when you come to appear before 
the judge, the son of Aegina, and he has you 
within his grasp, you will stand there with 
swimming head and open mouth, you no less 
there than I here, and very likely some one will 
strike you, yes, strike you insultingly upon the 
cheek, and treat you with every contumely.% 

Now all this, I dare say, seems to you as 
some old nurse’s tale, and you no doubt despise 
it ; and indeed there would be nothing strange 
in despising it, if by dint of searching we could 
find aught better and truer. But here, as you 
see, there are three of you, the wisest of all the 
Greeks of to-day, yourself and Polus and Gor- 
gias; and yet you can bring up nothing to 
prove that we ought to live any other life than 
this which is shown to be to our advantage in 
yonder place no less than here. And while all 


GORGIAS. 119 


these other propositions of ours have been re- 


futed, this alone remains steadfast, —that com- \ 


: 
\ 


mitting injustice is to be shunned rather than 
suffering it; and that beyond all things else a 
man must tke heed not to seem but to de good 
both in | private and in ‘public >; and that if-he 
become in any respect wicked he must be pun- 


ished for it, because second only to dezag just 


is to become just, and through punishment to 
atone for sin; and that he must shun every 
flattery, whether it concerns himself or others, 
the few or the many, and must use both rhetoric 
and every other agency in the cause of justice 
alone. 

Be persuaded, then, by me, and follow me 
to that place where, when you have reached 
it, you shall live in happiness both in life and 
after death, as our argument testifies. And 
let whosoever will despise you as a fool and 
maltreat you if he wish; yea, by Zeus, and 
cheerfully let him deal you that insulting blow, 
for no evil will come upon you if you_be truly 
good at and upright, and abide in the practice of 


virtue. And after we have thus. practised it | 


together, we will then, if it seems our duty, 
apply ourselves to the affairs of the State or 
whatever else we think best ; then we will give 
counsel as being better fitted to give it than we 
are now. Disgraceful were it indeed for us, 
in the condition we now find ourselves to be in, 
to take upon ourselves airs as if we were of 


i 7 
nee 
: ¥ ‘ 


120 GORGIAS. 


some account, when we can never hold to the 
same opinion upon the same questions, though 
they be of the greatest importance ; such is the 
depth of our ignorance! Let us, therefore, use 
the present argument as a guide which points 
\ out to us that the best way of life is to practise 
justice and every other virtue, and so to live 
jand so to die. This way, then, we will follow, 
and we will call upon all other men to do the 
‘same, not that which you believe in and call 
upon me to follow; for that way, Callicles, is 
nothing worth. 


THE REPUBLIC. 


THE REPUBLIC. 
BOOK VII. 


In the book which precedes this, Socrates maintains 
that only by living the life of a philosopher can a knowl- 
edge of the intellectual world, where alone true being 
resides, be gained. The supreme idea of this higher 
world, the, * eal form of Good, whose light illumines all 
other ideas in the intellectual world, he likens to the sun, 
whose light must illumine any object which the eye 
would see clearly in the visible world. The thought is 
carried out in the following allegory of a cave or lower 
world, which bears the same relation to the visible world 
in which we live that the latter bears to the world of pure 
ideas above it. 

The conversation is between Socrates and Glaucon, 
Socrates speaking in the first person. 


514 “PicTuRE to yourself a company of men in a 
kind of underground cavern-like dwelling, which 
has an opening towards the light extending all 
the way across one side; here from childhood 
they have been fastened by the legs and the © 
neck, in such wise that they are kept ever in 
one position and see only what is in front of 
them, because by reason of the chains they 
cannot turn their heads round. Light, how- 


122 


515 


THE REPUBLIC. 


ever, they have from a fire which is burning 
high up at some distance behind them; and 
between the fire and the prisoners there runs a 
raised road, along which you see a low wall 
built like the screens which the jugglers set up 
between themselves and their audience, over 
which to display their shows.” 

“T see it all,” said Glaucon. 

“Imagine, furthermore, men who are carry- 
ing behind this wall images of men and all 
sorts of animals, made of wood and stone and 
wrought in every fashion, and other articles of 
every kind, which project above the wall; and 
suppose, as would be natural, that sqme of those 
who carry the images are talking, others silent.” 

“This is a strange picture,” said he, “and 
strange prisoners are these.” 

“Very like ourselves,’ I rejoined. ‘ Do 
you suppose, in the first place, that people in 
such case could ever see anything, whether of 
themselves or of each other, save the shadows 
which the fire casts upon the side of the cave 
directly opposite them ?” 

“How could they,’ he answered, “if all 
their lives they had been forced to keep their 
heads immovable ?”’ 

“And what of the objects which are carried 
past? Would it not be the same thing with 
these?” 

*‘ Naturally it would.” 

“ And if they could talk together, do you not 


THE REPUBLIC. 123 


believe that they would agree upon common 
names for the figures they saw passing before 
them ?”’ ' 

“ Necessarily they would.” 

“ And how about this. If there were an echo 
from the prison wall in front of them, do you 
believe that whenever one of the passers-by 
spoke, they would suppose the sound to come 
from anything but the passing shadow?” 

“No, indeed, I do not,” was his reply. 

“So that, in fact,” said I, “ people of this sort 
would hold nothing for real, save the shadows 
of the images.” 

“ Necessarily so.”’ 

“Consider then,” I continued, “ what would 
be the effect of their release from prison and 
cure from folly if it came about thus. Suppose 
that one of them were set free and forced all 
of a sudden to get up and turn his head round, 
and walk and look up toward the light, and 
suppose it. pained him to do all this, and he 
was unable, on account of the brightness, to 
look at the objects of which all along he had 
been seeing the shadows. What, think you, 
would he say if some one told him that what 
he had been seeing all along was an illusion, 
but that now, from being somewhat nearer to 
reality and turned towards things more real, he 
saw more truly; and if moreover each passing 
object were pointed out to him, and he were 
forced to answer and say what each one was? 


124 


516 


r THE REPUBLIC. 


Do you not suppose he would be bewildered, 
and deem what he had been used to see far 
more real than what was now pointed out to 
him?” 

“ Much more real,” he said. 

“ And if he were forced to look at the light 
itself, would not his eyes pain him, and would 
he not turn away and again take refuge in such 
things as he was able to look upon, and believe 
that these were in reality more distinct than 
those now pointed out?” 

“Yes, so it would be,” he said. 

“Now suppose some one were to drag him by 
force up the rough steep ascent, and not let him 
go until he had been drawn out into the light 
of the sun, would he not, while he was being 
dragged along, suffer pain and distress, and on 
coming into the sunlight, would not his eyes be 
so filled with its brilliancy that he would be 
unable to see a single one of the things which 
we now call real?” 

“Yes, indeed,” he said, “in the first moment 
at least.” 

“Yes, he would certainly need to get accus- 
tomed to the upper world if he is ever to dis- 
cern objects there. And first he would find it 
easier to distinguish the shadows, then the re- 
flections in water of men and other objects, 
and after that the objects themselves. And 
from these he would turn his gaze upon the 
light of the stars and of the moon, finding it 


THE REPUBLIC. 125 


easier to look at things in the heavens and the 
heavens themselves by night, than at the sun 
and the light of the sun by day.” 

“ How could it be otherwise?” 

“And last of all, I suppose, he would look 
upon the sun, not its mere image reflected in 
water or in some other foreign substance, but 
the sun itself in its own abode, beholding it as 
it really is.” 

“ Undoubtedly he would.” 

“ And this would lead him to reflect that the 
sun it is which orders the seasons and the 
years, and is guardian of all things in the vis- 
ible world, and in some way the cause of those 
things that he and his fellows have been wont 
to see.” 

“Tt is plain,’ he assented, “that the one step 
would lead to the other.” 

“ Well then, calling to mind his former abode 
and his whilom wisdom and his fellow-prison- 
ers, do you not think he would deem himself 
blessed in the change, and pity them?” 

“Indeed I do.” | 

“ And suppose it were their habit among 
themselves to bestow praises and honours and 
rewards upon him whose vision was keenest for 
the passing objects, and who best remembered 
which of them were wont to pass first and 
which last and which together, and was there- 
fore best able to foretell what was coming 
next, would he, think you, be eager for these 


126 


517 


THE REPUBLIC. 


praises and envious of those who are vested 
with high honour and authority among them ; 
or would he not rather feel, with: Homer, that 
he would infinitely prefer to be — 

‘Bound to the soil, and serve another man, though portionless,’ * 
and suffer any manner of thing, rather than go 
on holding those opinions and living in that 
way?” 

“Ves,” said he, “I believe he would suffer 
anything rather than go on living in that way.” 

“ And now consider this, too,” I said; “ sup- 
pose a man of this sort were to return: below 
and seat himself in his old place, would not his 
eyes, coming thus suddenly out of the sunlight, 
be filled with darkness ?” 

“Most certainly they would.” 

“And if he had once more to enter intoa 
contest with those who had always remained 
prisoners, in discerning the shadows we have 
spoken of, his sight being as yet weak and his 
eyes not having yet adjusted themselves to the 
new conditions, and if it should take no little 
time to get used to these, would they not laugh 
him to scorn, and declare that his visit to the 
upper world had spoiled his eyes for him, and 
that the ascent was not worth even the at- 
tempt? And if any one tried to release them 
and lead them upwards, they would put him to 
death if they could manage to get him into 
their clutches; would they not?” 

“That they would,” said he. 


THE REPUBLIC. 127 


“Here, then, my dear Glaucon,” I said, “you 
have the parable which must be added to what 
we spoke of before. The world seen by the, 
eye is represented by the prison house, the! 
light of the fire by the power of the sun; and. 
if you will take the upward journey and the. 
sight of things above to be the ascent of the 
soul to the world of thought, you will not fail 
to apprehend my hope, since you wish to know 
it, though whether or not it be true God only 
knows. My belief then is this: in the realm ; 
of knowledge the Idea of Good is the final goal >. 
and is perceived only with effort; but when | | 
once perceived it is recognized as the source 
of all things true and beautiful, in the visible 
world giving birth to light and the lord of - 
light,® in the world of thought standing forth 
itself as the dispenser of truth and reason ; and 
upon this his gaze must be bent who would act 
rationally whether in private or in public.” 

“JT agree with you,” he rejoined, “so far, at 
least, as I am able to follow.” : 

“Pray, then,” said I, “agree with me also 
in thinking it no marvel that they who have 
attained this height do not desire to take part 
in the affairs of men; but their souls ever im- 
pel them to linger above; for this were but 
natural, if our parable may still be applied.” 

“Quite natural,” he said. 

“Well, then, is it strange, do you think, that 
a man who passes from contemplation of the 


128 


518 


THE REPUBLIC. 


divine to the human, conducts himself awk- 
wardly and makes a very ridiculous appearance 
if he is compelled, while his sight is still weak 
and he is not yet thoroughly accustomed to the 
darkness around him, to enter into a contest, in © 
a court of justice or elsewhere, concerning shad- 
ows of justice or rather the images which cast. 
these shadows, and to dispute about the notions 
entertained concerning these by men who have 
never had a glimpse of justice herself?” % 

“ Not strange in the least,” he replied. 

“On the contrary,” I added, “if a man has 
any sense, he will remember that there are two 
kinds of disturbance of the eyes, which arise 
from two causes, the passage from light into 
darkness and the passage from darkness into 
light. Wherefore, reflecting that it is the same 
with the soul, he will not thoughtlessly laugh - 
when he beholds one which is bewildered and 
unable to see clearly, but will examine whether 
it has come out of a brighter life and is blinded 
from being unaccustomed to darkness, or 
whether, having come out of a lower state of 
ignorance into a brighter life, it is dazzled by 
the more brilliant radiance; and then he will 
account the one happy in its condition and 
mode of life, and pity the other; and if he have 
a mind to laugh at this soul, his laughter will 
be less ridiculous than when it is directed 
against the soul which has come down from the 
light above.” 


THE REPUBLIC. 129 


“You speak most sensibly,” he said. 

“Tf this, then,” I said, “is the truth in re- 
gard to these matters, we ought to believe that 
education is not what certain of those who pro- 
fess it proclaim. For they say that they can 
put into the soul a knowledge which it does not 
possess, as if they would put sight into blind 
eyes.” % 

“ Yes, they say they can do this,” he said. 

“But our argument,” I continued, “makes it 
clear that every man has within his soul this 
faculty and the instrument whereby each man 
may acquire knowledge; and that just as we 
might suppose it to be impossible for the eye 
to turn from darkness to light save with the 
whole body also, so it is necessary that not 
this faculty only but the whole soul with it be 
turned round from the world of change, until it 
becomes able to bear the sight of the real and 
what is brightest in the real. And this we call 
the Good, do we not ?” 

ae fy 

“ And the art would consist in bringing 
about in the easiest and most efficacious way 
this very process of conversion; not creating | 
sight within a man, byt assuming that sight is 
already there, only not rightly directed nor 
looking where it should, and contriving a rem- 
edy for this.” 

“TI suppose so,” he said. 

“‘ Now the other so-called virtues of the soul 


130 


519 


THE REPUBLIC. 


are very like those of the body, having, as a 
matter of fact, no existence there in the be- 
ginning, but being afterwards engendered by 
custom and practice ; whereas the virtue of wis- 
dom is a part of something, it would seem, far 
more divine, having within itself a force which 
never perishes, but by the process of conver- 
sion becomes either useful and beneficent, or 
else useless and productive of harm. Take one 
of that class known for bad men, yet clever. 
Have you never observed what keen glances 
the sorry soul of the fellow darts out, and how 
quick he is to discern all to which his attention 
is turned, thus showing that his sight is not de- 
fective, but that he is impelled to use it in the 
service of evil, so that the more keenly he sees, 
so much more the harm he works?” 

“Most true.” 

“Now then,” I said, “if a soul endowed with 
such a nature had from childhood been shorn 
of all things akin to the temporal, which, like 
leaden weights, cling to pleasures of the table 
and gluttonous delights of that nature, and 
which turn the eye of the soul towards things 
below ; ® if, released from these, it had been 
turned towards the Truth, this self-same fac- 
ulty of these self-same men would have been 
just as keen to discern this as to see that upon 
which its gaze is now directed.” 

“Very probably,” he said. 

“Then is it not also probable, nay, from 


THE REPUBLIC. I3I 


what was said before, positive, that neither 
those who are uneducated and unacquainted 
with Truth, nor those who are suffered to spend 
their whole life over their education, are quali- 
fied to be guardians of a state; the former be- 
cause they have no single aim in life with a 
view to which all their actions, both private 
and public, are performed, the latter because 
of their own free will they perform no duties at 
all, imagining themselves, although still in the 
flesh, to be already dwelling far away in the 
Happy Isles?” 

“Very true,’ said he. 

“Our business, then, as founders of the 
State,” said I, “is to compel the best endowed — 
natures amongst us to reach that knowledge | 
which we have already declared to be the high- — 
est of all, and to behold the Good and to make | 
the upward journey of which we spoke; but 
when they have made the journey and have 
gazed their fill, we must not allow them to do 
what is now allowed them.” 

“What is that, pray?” 

“To remain there,” I said, “and refuse to 
come down again to the prisoners of whom we 
have been speaking, and to share in their labours 
and honours, whether trivial or important.” 

“What,” he cried, ‘shall we act so unfairly 
by them, as to make them live a less desirable 
life when they might have a better one?” 

“Again, my friend,” said I, “you have for- 


132 


520 


THE REPUBLIC. 


gotten that the law does not concern itself for 
the special welfare of any one class in the State, 
but strives to bring about the welfare of the 
whole State, binding the citizens together both 
by persuasion and by force, and making them 
sharers one with the other in the benefits which 
they are severally able to render for the common 
weal; and that it creates men of this stamp in 
the State, not to the end that they may be free 
each to betake himself wheresoever he will, but 
that they may be made use of for the binding 
together of the State.” 

“True,” said he, ‘I had quite forgotten.” 

“Consider then, dear Glaucon,”’ I said, “that 
in persuading those of us who are philosophers 
to have a care for others and to watch over 


‘ them, we shall not be dealing unjustly by them 


but shall be telling them what is right. For we 
shall tell them that in other cities it is reason- 
able that men of their sort should not share in 
the toils of state, for they grow-up of them- 
selves, against the desire of the government, 
and it is right that what is of natural growth 
and owes its nurture to none should pay to 
none a nurse’s wage. But you, on the other 
hand, we have called into existence both for 
your own good and for that of the whole State, 
to be, as it were, leaders and monarchs of the 
hive, because, being better and more thoroughly 
instructed than the others, you are better qual- 


ified to take part in life, both public and pri- 


THE REPUBLIC. 133 


vate. You must, therefore, every one in his 
turn, go down to the abode of the others, and 
accustom yourselves to looking upon the dark- 
ness, for when you are once accustomed to it 
you will see ten thousand times better than 
those below, and will know what the different 
images are and of what they are the images, 
because you have beheld the truth in regard to 
the Beautiful and the Just and the Good. And 
thus shall our State be peopled; as a reality, 
not as adream like most of our States, which 
are peopled by men fighting with one another 
for shadows and disputing about bearing rule, 
as if that were some mighty good. But the 
truth is, I imagine, that the State wherein those 
destined to rule are least eager for rule must 
needs be governed in the best and most peace- 
able way, while in the State where the rulers 
are of the opposite mind the opposite is true.” 

“Most assuredly,” he said. 

“And when our wards hear. this, will they 
disobey us, and desire, not to share each in his 
‘turn the toils of state, but to pass the greater 
part of their time together in the world of pure 
thought ?” : 

“Impossible,” said he, “for our demands are 
just, and they are just men of whom we make 
them. Rather will each of them go to his post 
of command, as under stress of necessity, not 
at all like those who now bear rule in every one 
of our States.” 


134 THE REPUBLIC. 


“This then, my friend,” I said, “is the truth 

521 of the case. If for those who are destined to 
rule you will seek out a life which is better 
than ruling, it will be possible for you to have 

a well-ordered State ; for in such a State alone 
will they bear rule who are truly rich, not in 
gold, but in that wealth which the happy man 
must needs possess, — a wise and virtuous life.” 


ee 


i 
i es 
eee 


, 


ca 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


NOTE I, p. I. 


“To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast 
-Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest,” 
~ — Henry IV., Part 1, Act iv. Scene 2. 
is Shakespeare’s paraphrase of the old saw “ Fi irst at a feast 
and last at a fray,” some version of which was evidently fa- 
miliar to the contemporaries of Socrates. 

According to Demosthenes (PAz/. I. 35), this reproach was 
peculiarly applicable to his fellow countrymen. “ Your festi- 
vals,” he complains, “are always celebrated at the prover 
time, but as to your fleets, they always arrive too late.” 


NOTE 2, p. 2. 


Unless Gorgias and the newcomers may be supposed to 
have exchanged the customary greetings before the opening 
words of Callicles, an interval must be imagined at this junc- 
ture, during which they take place, the dialogue being resumed 
with the words: “Tell me, Gorgias.” 


NOTE 3, p. 3. 


This HEropicus, of Leontini in Sicily, is not to be con- 
founded with his namesake of Selymbria mentioned in the 
Protagoras (316 E), as well as in the Republic (406 A-B). 


NOTE 4, Pp. 3. 


The “brother of Aristophon ” is no other than the cele- 
brated Polygnotus, the.painter of historical pictures, among 
the most noted of which were those that decorated the Lesche 
or assembly room attached to the temple at Delphi, represent- 


138 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


ing the capture of Troy and the descent of Odysseus into 
Hades. This painter seems to have created a revolution in 
the art of his day by his success in the portrayal of character. 
Aristotle advises the young to study his works because they 
‘‘express moral ideas” (Pol. VI. 5, p. 1340 a), and speaks 
of him as a “good character painter” in contrast to Zeuxis, 
whose paintings “contain nothing of character.’’ — Poetics, 6, 
p- 1450 a. It may be conceived that Aristotle, in naming 
him thus, means that inasmuch as, like the best tragic poets, 
he conceives actions to be the results not of outside circum- 
stances, but of character, he effects like them, “through fear 
and pity, purification from the passions.” — Poetics, 6, p. 1449 b. 


NOTE 5, p. 4 


Polus here quotes from his own treatise upon rhetoric, 
which Socrates presently speaks of having recently read (p. 
22). From the general reputation of Polus, as well as from 
this specimen of his style, we may take it to have been an ex- 
aggeration of that of Gorgias, overladen with antitheses and 
filled with “jingle of sounds,” which latter peculiarity Socrates 
subsequently parodies in addressing him as “ Most polished 
Polus” (p. 29). 

“What shall we say,” it is elsewhere asked, “of Polus’s 
school of language with its repetitions and sententious say- 
ings and figures of speech, and the nomenclature which Li- 
cymnius bequeathed him for the purpose of forming elo- 
quence ?’’ — Phaedrus, 267 C. 


NOTE 6, p. 4. 


Nothing could differ more widely, both in purpose and 
method, than the type of rhetoric which Plato calls a “barren 
pastime,” and “ the act of inveigling men’s souls with words ” 
(Phaedrus, 260-261), from that “ far nobler work of the dialec- 
tician who, taking a kindred soul, understands how to implant 
and engraft upon it words which . . . are not unfruitful, but 
contain within them seeds from which others again being im- 
planted, this in one nature, that in another, the seed becomes 


NOTES ON THE GORGIJAS. 139 


forever undying, and the possessor of it as happy as it is in 
the power of man to be.” — Phaedrus, 277 A. 


NOTE 7, p. 5. 
“ Such is my race, and such the blood I boast.” © 
— lliad, vi. 211. 
is a favourite vaunt of the Homeric heroes. 


NOTE 8, p. 8. 

The scoLi4#= convivial songs containing exhortations to 
wine, mirth, and love, and sometimes praises of gods and heroes 
or moral precepts and reflections — are said to have derived 
their name “crosswise” from the direction in which each per- 
former in turn passed to his successor the myrtle branch held 
in the hand while singing. These songs, though often well- 
_known couplets by poets such as Alczus or Anacreon, were 
not unfrequently improvised upon the occasion of some ban- 
quet, which was thus converted into a contest of poetic skill, a 
prize being awarded at its close to the best singer. 


NOTE 9, p. 8. 
The scolion in question, ascribed to Epicharmus or Simon- 
ides, runs thus : — 
Best gift to mortal man is health, 
Next ranks the power which beauty lends, 
Third blameless riches to enjoy, 
Fourth to live happy days with friends. 

Very similar to this was the famous couplet inscribed over 
the gateway of the temple of Leto at Delos, which is quoted 
by Aristotle (Eth. Nicom., i. 8): — 

Pure justice is most fair; best good is health ; 

But sweetest far to gain what we desire. 
This is found with slight changes in 7heognds, 255, 256; and 
in the Creusa of Sophocles (/rag., 328), quoted by Stobaeus 
(f7or., 103, 15). 


NOTE 10, p. Io. 


ZEUXIS was a contemporary of Socrates. A native of Hera- 
clea, in lower Italy, and a pupil of the celebrated Apollodorus, 


I40 NOTES ON THE GORGIJAS. 


he was, like his master, more noted for the happy distribution 
of light and colour and the expression of transitory emotions, 
than for the expressive delineation of character wherein his 
predecessor Polygnotus excelled. To his mind, illusion was 
the highest quality of art, as shown by the story of the contest | 
with Parrhasius, in which he confessed himself defeated, be- 
cause, while birds had been deceived by his own painting of a 
cluster of grapes, his rival’s skilful representation of a curtain 
had deceived men. Various stories are told of the high esti- 
mation set by himself upon his works. Underneath his pic- 
ture of the A¢hk/ete he caused the inscription to be placed 
that it was easier to criticise than to imitate it, and when re- 
proached for working slowly, he replied that he painted for 
eternity. Notwithstanding his customary charge of an admis- 
sion fee to his studio, he is said, after having made a large for- 
tune by decorating the palace of Archelaus of Macedonia, to 
have given his pictures away, declaring that no money was an 
equivalent for their value. 


NOTE II, p. 13. 


About 458 B. C. the Athenians built the two original “ Long 
Walls,” probably in accordance with the former plan of The- 
mistocles. One ran southwesterly to the newly fortified har- 
bour of Piraeus, the other more southerly to the old roadstead 
at Phalerum.—7hucyd. i. 107, 108. Several years later, Peri- 
cles built a second wall to Piraeus, parallel to the first, so as 
to protect on both sides a road to the harbour. This was 
called the Middle Wall, as it ran between the older Piraic 
wall and the Phaleric wall. The two Piraic walls were some- 
times called Northern and Southern, from their positions. 

The walls of the city of Athens, to which Gorgias refers, 
were built under the direction of Themistocles himself, and 
were a monument of his craft and diplomatic skill. At the 
close of the Persian war, under the pretext that fortified towns 
might be useful to invaders, but in reality out of jealousy to 
Athens, the Lacedaemonians proposed to allow no fortifications 
outside the Peloponnesus. Upon this, by advice of Themisto- 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. I4I 


cles, the Athenians proceeded to rebuild their walls, while 
an embassy, headed by Themistocles himself, was sent to 
Sparta, ostensibly for purposes of consultation, but in reality 
to lengthen out the time necessary for their erection. Tidings 
being subsequently received in Sparta of the work going on at 
Athens, Lacedaemonian envoys were despatched there to learn 
the truth of the story, but not before a secret message had 
been sent by Themistocles to have them detained until his own 
return, which, upon the completion of the walls, he safely ac- 
complished. 
NOTE 12, p. 14. 

The study of medicine was held in high honour in Greece, 
where it partook indeed almost of a sacred character, a solemn 
oath being required before pupils were admitted to the Temple 
of Aesculapius, the nearest approach to a medical college in 
that day. Many of the cities appointed public physicians, who 
received a regular salary from the state for their medical at- 
tendance upon the citizens, while those of their assistants who 
by dint of observation and natural quickness had picked up 
some knowledge of the healing art were deputed to minister to 
the slaves. In the Laws, a contrast is drawn between the 
practice of the freeman’s physician and that of the slave doc- 
tor; the former proceeding from his own close observation, 
and from the information that he is careful to elicit from the 
patient or his friends, whose assent and confidence indeed is 
a necessary condition of the treatment; the latter exchanging 
never a word with the sick man or his family, but prescribing, 
“as if he knew all about it,” whatever experimental treatment 
strikes his fancy, and then “ bustling off full of complacent as- 
surance to some other patient.’”’ — Laws, 720 C-D. 


NOTE 13, p. 14. 


While the gymnasia were frequented at will by those who 
wished to practise running, jumping, and other feats of skill, as 
well as boxing and wrestling, the exercises at the PALAESTRA 
were directed by paid instructors and confined more or less to 
those of a purely combative nature. 


142 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


NOTE 14, p. 16. 


The same “ spirit of strife’? is elsewhere alluded to as actu- 
ating the uneducated, who, “ when they differ upon some sub- 
ject, give never a thought to the truth of the matter, but are 
bent only upon getting their audience to agree with what they 
assert.” — Phaedo, 91 A. And in still another passage this 
class is characterized as “incapable of subdividing a subject 
and examining it under its several heads, but always seeking 
out some verbal contradiction, so that, while imagining them- 
selves to be engaged in discussion, they are in reality disput- 
ing.” — Repub. 454 A. 


NOTE I5, p. 19. 


- That knowledge is identical with right conduct was a cardinal 
doctrine with Socrates, who declares that since all men, so far as 
possible, make choice of and practise whatever seems to them- 
selves most profitable, it can be only through lack of knowl- 
edge that they ever err in the choice of pleasures. — Prot. 357 
D. It is, however, not in this but in its ordinary acceptation 
that Gorgias has spoken of knowledge throughout the whole of 
the preceding conversation, and it is a proof of the singular 
want of readiness which in general distinguishes the interloc- 
utors of Socrates that Gorgias allows this sudden introduc- 
tion of an individual and peculiar definition to pass unchal- 
lenged. Nor can we wonder that Callicles, smarting under 
the recollection of this undue advantage gained by Socrates, 
should complain, as he afterwards does, that he twists mean- 
ings to suit himself (p. 53). 

It is interesting to compare with this cardinal doctrine of 
Socrates concerning knowledge and virtue, the opinion so 
strenuously insisted upon by Carlyle, that vice, or even untrue 


\ opinion, is incompatible with great intellectual power. “ Be- 
‘lieve not,” he says, in speaking of Goethe, “that a great mind 


can be joined with a bad heart.” 


NOTES ON THE GORG/AS. 143 


NOTE I6, p. 19. 


This is possibly a reference, like that on page 51, to ‘Aasila, 
the Egyptian deity, who is always represented with the head of 
a dog. What influence, if any, was exerted by Egypt upon the 
religious conceptions of the Greeks, it is impossible to ascer- 
tain. It is certain, however, that there are similarities between 
the worship of Isis and Osiris, and that of Demeter and Di- 
onysus, and it has even been conjectured, from allusions in 
Plato’s dialogues, that through intercourse with the Egyptian 
priests he had obtained the key to that mysterious and occult 
knowledge which the adepts of India still claim to possess. 


NOTE 17, p. 22. 


In defining rhetoric as ‘‘a kind of dexterity,” Socrates 
marks the difference between the art of dialectics, which “like 
a coping stone crowns the other sciences” (Repub. 534 E), 
and which proceeds by the scientific method of proving by 
argument, and that of rhetoric itself, which, seeking only to 
“win men’s souls by words,” is in reality, like fancy cookery, 
“not art at all,” but rather “a barren pastime.” — Phaedr. 
260-261. 

The treatise on rhetoric mentioned immediately above is the 
same which Polus himself had previously quoted (p. 4). 


NOTE 18, p. 23. 


The art of “ flattery,” which Plato apparently regards as the 
faculty of securing one’s own end by pandering to others, is 
in another dialogue described as follows : — 

“* The art which the mercenary has of making himself agree- 
able in his intercourse with others and preparing for them the 
bait of enjoyment, exacting as pay for his flattery nothing but 
his maintenance — this we should, I imagine, all of us, call a 
species of sweetening art.” — Sophist, 222 E. 

The art of “personal adornment’? necessarily includes not 
only wearing fine clothes, but painting the face, dyeing the hair, 
and in fact all the artifices of the toilet. 


144 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


NOTE 19, p. 24. 

That the “political art” should have been held by Aristotle 
to embrace not only legislative justice but ethics as well, throws 
light upon what he considered the relative position of private 
and public virtue. The citizen’s relation to the state out- 
weighed all ties of kinship ; compared to the public good that 
of the individual sank into insignificance, or rather was com- 
prehended in the larger term of welfare of the state. In view 
of this there could be no greater reproach than that of having 
counterfeited the political art, the very embodiment of interests 
the loftiest and most sacred. 


NOTE 20, p. 24. 


The allusion to a “colt,” the translation of Polus’s name, is 
not unprovoked, since he has just given proof of his immaturity 
of mind, by demanding a panegyric of rhetoric before a proper 
definition of rhetoric itself has been reached. 


NOTE 21, p. 26. 


This passage may be compared with another where Socrates 
contrasts the Sophist and the rhetorician, to the great advan- 
tage of the former (p. 106). 


NOTE 22, p. 26. 


Anaxagoras found the key to the construction of the uni- 
verse ina divine intelligence which, although not the creator 
of matter, had yet brought matter from its original condition 
of indiscriminate confusion and chaos into order and shape- 
liness. 

Pericles was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and is said by Plato to 
have owed in great measure to his master his success in public 
life, inasmuch as from the knowledge gained from him of the 
higher philosophy, comprising a familiar acquaintance with the 
“nature of mind and matter,” were derived the lofty concep- 
tions which formed the mainspring of many of his public ac- 
tions. — Phaedrus, 270 A. 


. 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 145 


NOTE 23, p. 27. 

In general the ‘‘ tyrant’’ was some ambitious noble who in 
times of political excitement persuaded the people to choose 
him as their champion against the governing body, and ended 
by usurping the power for himself, the originator of such a. 
scheme having an additional chance of-success, when, as in 
the case of Peisistratus, a descendant of Codrus, he happened - 
to have one of the ancient kings as ancestor. 

The modern use of the word tyrant has somewhat obscured 
its original meaning, which is that of a despotic, but not nec- 
essarily harsh or unbeneficent ruler. Deeply rooted, however, 
in the Greek, and especially in the Athenian mind, was a hatred 
of unconstitutional rule —a conviction that a government is di- 
rectly answerable to the whole body of citizens, and that, this 
obligation once removed, it degenerates into the arbitrary and 
irresponsible sway of a single individual. ‘‘ Tyranny,” Aris- 
totle declares, “being a compound of extreme oligarchy and 
democracy, is of all governments the most prejudicial to sub- 
jects, as being composed of two evils and containing in itself 
the perversions and errors of both these polities.’? — Po/. V. 
10, p. 1310 b. 

NOTE 24, p. 28. 

The blank which occurs here does not necessarily imply the 
omission of some word too strong for polite ears, but more 
probably indicates a momentary lapse of memory such as is 
often filled out with some such ejaculation as “ What do you 
call him?” or “What is his name ?” 


NOTE 25, p. 29. 


A previous speech of Polus (p. 4) exemplifies the jingle of 
sounds for which he was celebrated, and which Socrates play- 
fully imitates in addressing him thus. 


NOTE 26, p. 33- 


During the latter part of the Peloponnesian war, when the 
Athenian fleet, crippled by recent disasters, was maintaining 


146 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


a desperate struggle against the Lacedaemonians at Samos, a 
small party of the oligarchical faction contrived to wrest the 
power from the democracy and to establish despotic rule. The 
allusion in the text refers to the culminating act of the four 
hundred, as this party were called, when “with concealed dag- 
gers” they entered the Senate house and disbanded the five 
hundred senators, handing to each one, as he passed out, his 
pay for the remainder of the yearly term of office. The gov- 
ernment of these self- constituted rulers was within a year 
broken up by internal factions, instigated probably by Thera- 
menes, one of their own number, and democratic rule was re- 
stored. 
NOTE 27, p. 35. 

Notwithstanding the evil deeds of ARCHELAUS, he is highly 
commended by Thucydides (2. 100), who declares that he im- 
proved Macedonia to a greater extent than any one of his pred- 
ecessors had done. At his court, to which Socrates is said 
to have been invited, Greek authors of distinction were hos- 
pitably entertained, notably Euripides, who there ended his 
days. 

NOTE 28, p. 36. 

That Plato expressly includes women with men in this pas- 
sage is an indication of his views in regard to their position 
and responsibilities, which he expresses still more clearly in his 
plans for the ideal state. Denying that one kind of education 
will make a good guardian of a man, and another a good guar- 
dian of a woman, he insists that “in the administration of a 
state there are no pursuits which devolve especially upon a 
woman as a woman, or upon a man as a man; for natural en- 
dowments are scattered equally amongst both sexes, and a 
woman is by nature fitted to bear her share in every kind of 
pursuit just as a man is, save that in everything woman has 
less strength than man.” And the conclusion he arrives at 
is that “there is no better thing for a state than that its 
women and its men alike be as good as possible.” — Repub. | 


455-450. : ; 


NOTES ON THE GORGIJAS. 147 


NOTE 29, p. 38. 

NictiAs is the unfortunate general whose want of energy and 
decision caused the destruction of the Athenian fleet before 
Syracuse in the Peloponnesian war; ARISTOCRATES, one of 
the generals sentenced to death for their failure to pick up the 
dead bodies of their comrades after the sea fight of Arginusae 
at a later period of the same war. Neither of these men can 
be taken as examples of inordinate greed for power or riches, 
and are apparently named only.on the general supposition that 
they who possess wealth and worldly position hold these in 
exaggerated estimation, or possibly because their dedication of 
votive offerings in commemoration of successful services 
rendered to the state (see Note 35) may imply an undue value 
placed upon memorials of worldly triumph. 

The offerings here alluded to were tripods, which, bearing 
inscribed upon them the name of the tribe to which the victor 
belonged, were placed upon pedestals in the neighborhood of 
the great theatre of Dionysus. 


NOTE 30, p. 4I. 


The punishment of burning an offender alive after placing 
him in a sack smeared with pitch, was enforced not by legal 
enactment, but by mob-law. — Repud. 361 E. 


NOTE 31, p. 4I. 


The word here translated by “bugbear’”’ is derived from 
mormo, a hobgoblin, apparently not unlike the French crogue- 
mitaine, which was held up as a terror to children. The same 
“bugbear terrors which are used to frighten us like children,” 
are mentioned also in the C7z¢o (46 C). 


NOTE 32, p. 42. 


Such was the public indignation roused against the generals 
commanding in the sea fight of the Arginusae, in consequence 
of their failure to pick up the dead bodies of their comrades 
and to render them the customary funeral rites, that it was 


148 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


proposed at Athens to decide upon the guilt of the offenders, 
not by individual trial in a court of law, before the dikasts or 
jurymen, but collectively and by vote of the several tribes on 
the occasion of a public assembly. To Socrates, as chairman 
of the presiding tribe, fell the duty of putting this illegal pro- 
position to the vote, and it is his spirited refusal to do so which 
he now ironically ascribes to his ignorance of the proper mode 
of procedure. 
NOTE 33, p- 49- 

This is of course a playful presentation of the question, 
for, in opposition to a commonly received code of morals, Soc- 
rates held that “it can never be right to do another harm.” 
— Repub. 335 E. Here, however, he assumes for the moment 
that the opposite course is right, in order to bring out his own 
deep conviction, that what is commonly held to be man’s ad- 
vantage is that which in reality often works him the greatest 
injury. i 

“The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.’’— z Cor. 
iii. 19. 

NOTE 34, p- 50. 

The name of PyRILAMPES, the father of DEmus and friend 
of Pericles, figures in several embassies to Asia, where the 
physical beauty for which he was celebrated is said to have 
excited much admiration. But he was still better known from 
his cultivation of the peacock, a bird but lately introduced 
into Greece and still so great a rarity that visitors travelled 
even from Thessaly and Sparta to be present on the day of the 
month set apart for its exhibition to the public. It would 
appear that Demus had inherited his father’s good looks, for 
he figures in the Wass of Aristophanes (vs. 98), as a petted 
favourite. The coincidence of his name (Demus = people) 
gives Socrates an opportunity to emphasize in a natural way 
his disapproval of the orators for following as they did the will 
of the masses, instead of attempting to guide and control them. 

In point of fact, the intimacy of Alcibiades with Socrates 
had ceased with his own advancement to political power, as a 
means, perhaps, towards acquiring which he had sought the 
society of the great master of dialectics. — Mem. I. ii. 17. 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 149 


NOTE 35, p. 51. 

Socrates here alludes to the Choregia, one of the so-called 
liturgies or public services which every citizen possessed of a 
certain competency was expected in his turn to render the 
state. The Choregus was responsible for the choruses in the 
public plays, his duties including not only the payment of. the 
teachers and actors but their maintenance, and also all ar- 
rangements necessary to the performance. Another of the 
liturgies had for its object the training and maintenance of 
combatants in the public festivals and was performed by the 
Gymnasiarchy ; and yet. another, which provided the triremes 
or ships of war, devolved upon the Trierarchy. So heavy 
were the expenses sometimes incurred, that in times of great 
depression two citizens were allowed to share them, while on 
the other hand the offices were often coveted by the wealthy 
and ambitious, who, if the result of their endeavours was ac- 
ceptable to the state, were awarded public honours, to com- 
memorate which, tripods such as those mentioned in Note 29 
were erected. 

NOTE 36, p. 55- 

It was customary for wealthy citizens to keep as pets beasts 
of prey, who, from having been tamed when young, had lost 
their savage instincts. 


NOTE 37; P- 55: 

The position taken by Callicles is the same as that of Thra- 
symachus in the Ref Republicy who pronounces justice to be “noth- 
ing more than the interest of the stronger-”=Repub. 338 C. 

he quotation from Pindar is thus paraphrased by Thompson - 
in his edition of the Gorgias (1871): — 

“ There is a law of nature, the law of the strongest, to which 
all in heaven and earth must submit, and which overrides at 
times all positive enactments, fortifying deeds of violence 
which are condemned by human codes. This law sanctioned 
many of the exploits of Hercules, otherwise indefensible, as 
in particular that in which he seized, without money paid or 


150 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


leave asked, the cows of Geryones, and drove them from the 
far west away to the palace of Eurystheus at Argos.” 

The phrase “ Law is king of all” soon passed into a prov- 
erb, and, singularly enough, came to be quoted in the sense of 
tyranny of convention, exactly the opposite meaning from the 
original one of Pindar. According to the view of Gorgias and 
his school, that nothing has real existence, the law of con- 
science would naturally be regarded in the light of a useless 
restraint, or perhaps even, in the words of Callicles, as a “ vul- 
gar and fallacious notion.” They, on the other hand, who 
hold that there is an absolute and eternal Truth, have in rev- 
erence those “unwritten laws” which are acknowledged by 
every human conscience alive to a sense of its own responsi- 
bility. ‘ These,” Socrates held, “ were appointed by the gods 
for men, and such as transgress these laws appointed by the 
gods shall suffer for it, for no man may by any possibility 
escape the punishment of such transgression.” — XEN. Mem. 
TW ave 23; 

NOTE 38, p. 56. 

It is a significant fact that the phrase here used, naadv xityabov, 
literally “‘ good and fair,” originally a credential of gentle birth 
and subsequently used by Socrates as a term of the highest 
moral commendation, becomes upon the lips of Callicles the 
synonym for worldly success, a definition characteristic of the 
practical man in a narrow sense, to whom all occupations which 
have not a strictly utilitarian purpose are but foolishness. 
Even Isocrates, a rhetorician respected and commended by 
Plato himself, inveighs against the folly of grown men in 
pursuing philosophical studies “ good only to keep very young 
men out of mischief,” and adds that many of those “best 
versed in such studies are yet in the common affairs of life 
more ignorant than are their own pupils, not tosay their house- 
hold slaves.” — Panathenaicus, p.230 C-D. This animadver- 
sion against philosophy, as unfitting young men for public life 
and thus bringing about their political ruin, explains in a meas- 
ure the charge brought against Socrates of corrupting the 
young. 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. ISI 


NOTE 309, p. 58. 


The allusion is to a passage in the //zad, where the venera- 
ble Phoenix, in attempting to dissuade Achilles from his rash 
resolve to abandon the Greek hosts before Troy, speaks thus: 


“ How, then, dear boy, can I remain behind, 
Alone? whom with thee aged Peleus sent, 
That day when he in Agamemnon’s cause 
From Phthia sent thee, inexperienc’d yet 
In all the duties of confed’rate war, 
And sage debate, on which attends renown.” 
— lliad, 9, 441. [Lord Derby’s translation. 


NOTE 40, p. 58. 


These words, and also the lines on p. 56, are from the Azzz- 
ope, one of the lost tragedies of Euripides, of which only about 
one hundred and twenty lines remain. The story was that 
AMPHION and ZETHUS, sons of Antiope by Zeus, were in their 
infancy confided by their mother to the care of a shepherd on 
Mt. Cithaeron. Zethus, who had adopted the profession of 
herdsman and hunter, thus reproaches his brother because, 
endowed by Hermes with the lyre, he has given himself up to 
the pursuit of music, to the neglect of practical pursuits. 

“ Thou shunnest, Amphion, what thou should’st pursue, 
The nobly gifted soul which nature gave thee 
Disguising that by womanish disguise. 
No voice hast thou when justice holds her council, 
No words of weight persuasive canst thou find, 
Nor prompt in injured innocence’ defence, 
The gallant counsel and the high resolve.” 
— Gorgias. [E. Cope’s translation. 


NOTE 41, ps 59- 

The outlaw was visited with civil death. Having no exist- 
ence in the eyes of the law, he was excluded from its benefits, 
and thus any indignity, even this last of all insults to a Greek, 
—a box on the ear, — might be inflicted upon him with impu- 
nity. 


152 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


NOTE 42, p. 59. 


The lines from which this expression is taken are the contin- 
uation of those already quoted (p. 56), from the tragedy of 
Anttope : — 

Cease from this strain, use melody of arms, 
Song such as this shall bring thee fair renown, 
Delve, till the soil, be guardian of our herds, 
Leaving to fools such fine-drawn niceties, 
Their guerdon empty stores and poverty. 


In the description which is given above of the probable con- 
duct of Socrates before a court of justice we recognize the 
actual scene of his trial, and in the “ mean and low. accuser ” 
the insignificant Meletus who appeared upon that occasion as 
plaintiff. The charges of impiety preferred against Socrates 
not only admitted of his being “dragged to prison” without 
any previous summons before a judge, but left it to the accuser 
to propose the penalty of his offence. 


NOTE 43, p. 61. 


Of TISANDER nothing is known. ANDRON, who is men- 
tioned in the Profagoras as one of the group gathered round 
Hippias, is supposed to have been the father of Androtion, 
a disciple of the celebrated orator Isocrates. NAUSICYDES is 
probably the meal merchant mentioned by Xenophon as “so 
wealthy that he maintains not only himself and his household, 
but many sheep and cattle in addition, and over and above all 
this makes so much that he is able to perform frequent services 
to the state.” — AZem. II. vii. 6. 


NOTE 44, p. 67. 


This peculiarity in the eonversations of Socrates seems to 
have become a standing joke among his contemporaries. Al- 
cibiades remarks that “he talks only about pack asses and 
blacksmiths and cobblers and tanners, and always appears to 
say the same thing in the same words.”’ — Symp.221 E. And 
Xenophon tells us that Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, for- 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 153 


‘bade him again to mention the name of “ tanner and carpenter 
or blacksmith ; for,” he adds, “I think you have worn them 
threadbare, so much have you talked about them.” — XEN. 
Mem. |. ii., 37. It is related that Hippias, the man of “ uni- 
versal pretensions,” on accosting him one day with the re- 
mark, “Do you mean to say, Socrates, that you are still re- 
peating the same things which I heard you.-saying ages ago?” 
received the following answer: “ Nay, Hippias, what is still 
more remarkable, I not only keep on saying the same things, 
but upon the same subjects also. Now you, I suppose, with 
your universal knowledge, never by any chance say twice the 
same things upon the same subject.’”’— XEN. A/em. IV. iv. 6. 
See page 119, where Socrates gives it as a proof of incapacity 
that ‘‘we can never hold to the same opinion upon the same 
questions, though they be of the greatest importance.” 


NOTE 45, p. 68. 


In some of the texts the words “the rulers than the ruled” 
are added here. 

A little further on (lines 31-2) there is another difference of 
reading, the question of Callicles in respect to the temperate 
being in some of the MSS. answered by Socrates in the neg- 
ative, thus: “ How should I? Every one knows I do not 
mean these,” to which Callicles rejoins: “I should think not, 
indeed, Socrates.” ; 

NOTE 46, p. 69. 

The same tone is adopted by Callicles in regard to temper- 
ance which Thrasymachus used when he spoke of justice as a 
“noble folly ” (Repub. 348 D). Doubtless this attitude of pity- 
ing contempt proved a more effectual mode of warfare than - 
any direct opposition would have been, since to many men any 
reputation is more enviable than that of fool. 


NOTE 47, p. 71I. 


These lines are probably a quotation from the Polyidus, a 
lost tragedy of Euripides. The story runs that the seer Po- 
lyidus being unable to restore to life Glaucon, the son of Mi- 


154 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


nos, was sentenced to be buried alive with the dead body of the 
child. While in the tomb, Polyidus observed a snake which, 
approaching the body of a dead snake, applied to it a certain 
herb, whereupon the creature was. immediately restored to 
life. Following this example, Polyidus applied the herb to the 
child’s body, when the same result ensued. The tale is em- 
blematic of a theory of Heraclitus, as quoted by the pseudo- 
Plutarch. — Consol. ad Apollonium, 106 E. “ Living and dying 
are allone ; the former changes into the latter, the latter again 
into the former.” And in the Phaedo, Plato, following out 
the same idea, reasons that “if all things which have a part 
in life were to die, and after that remain in the condition of 
death and never come back to life again, it would follow of 
necessity that finally all things would be dead and nothing be 
left alive.” — Phaedo, 72 C 


NoTE 48, p. 71. 


It is of course impossible to render in English the play on 
the words dua (body) and ofjpa (tomb), rfos (vessel) and mavds 
(credulous), avofrovs (thoughtless) and apuirous (initiated), “A:dou 
(Hades), and 4e:d}s (invisible) The pun on gaya recalls a 
curious passage in the Cratylus (400 B-C.), where, after point- 
ing out various other possible derivations of the word body, 
Socrates finally likens it to a prison-house; and in the Phaedo 
again he speaks of the unpurified soul as “ compelled to sur- 
vey the things that really exist, not through her own power 
but through the body as if through the bars of a dungeon.” — 
Ph. 82 E. 

The “ingenious man” was doubtless some follower of Or- 
. pheus or Pythagoras, who, after the manner of his school, 
made choice of ambiguous expressions in order to hide his 
real meaning from the uninitiated. 

ae, # vessel perforated with holes” suggests the story of 
the Danaides who, in punishment for the murder‘of their bride- 
grooms, were condemned in Hades forever to pour water into 
a sieve. It is to this story that Aristotle alludes when, in 
speaking of the distribution, by the demagogues, of the surplus 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 155 


revenues of the state, he says that “to the needy such help 
as this is a perforated vessel indeed.’’ — Pol. VI. 5. 


NOTE 49, p- 73. 

This bird was probably a kind of plover, which, Aristotle 
tells us, “appears in the night and runs off by day.” — ARIST. 
Hist. Anim. 1X. 11. It dwelt, as its name signifies, in clefts 
of rock formed by mountain torrents, and was believed to 
cure jaundice by catching the disease through its eyes, for 
which reason the bird dealers always kept it covered up, lest 
a cure should be effected for nothing. ; 


_ NOTE 50, p. 75. 
In this playful mention of the deme to which he and Calli- 


cles belong, Socrates imitates the formalities habitually used 
when solemn covenants were drawn up. 


NOTE 51, p. 76. 

Not only the rhetoricians, but even some of the so-called 
teachers of philosophy affected the same tone of contempt 
in which Callicles here speaks of dialectical arguments. Hip- 
pias, for instance, the Sophist who laid claim to universal 
knowledge, calls them “ shavings ” or “ parings.” 


NOTE 52, p. 77. 

The Eleusinian MYSTERIES were of two kinds, the lesser be- 
ing in some sort a course of instruction in and preparation for 
the greater, which admitted the candidate into a full knowledge 
of the truths set forth under the symbolic form of Ceres’ 
wanderings in search of her daughter Persephone. In pop- 
ular belief, the mysteries purified men from guilt and secured 
them a favourable reception in the nether world; but we may 
well believe that to the thoughtful their value consisted in 
the removal of the sphere of contemplation from the world 
of sense to the world invisible and divine, and in the sense of 
personal communion with a higher power so wanting in the 
ordinary Greek worship. This is doubtless the meaning of 


156 _ NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


Plato when he asserts that “they who appointed the mysteries 
were no triflers, but were speaking with a hidden meaning 
when they said that he who went uninitiated and unconse- 
crated to the world below should wallow in mire, but he who 
had been purified by initiation should dwell with the gods. 
. . . And these,” he adds, “are in my opinion none other than 
they who have truly loved wisdom.” — Phaeda, 69 C. 


NOTE 53, p- 77. 
This saying, said to be of Empedocles, seems to have been 
a favourite with Plato, for we find it quoted in two other of 
his dialogues. — See Phzlebus, 59 E; Laws, 956 E. 


NOTE 54, p. 78. 


By this concession Callicles shows that he is not prepared 
to carry to all lengths the hedonism or theory of pleasure 
which he has been preaching. ‘ Do you suppose,” says Pro- 
tarchus in the Phz/ebus (13 B), “that when a man has once 
established the fact of pleasure being a good, he would suffer 
you to say that while some pleasures are goods others are 
evils ?” ‘* Having pleasure I should have everything” (P27. 
21 B) is the confession of the true hedonist. 


NOTE 55, p- 79. 

Dithyrambic verse, originally composed to be sung in hon- 
our of Dionysus at vintage time, had of recent years suffered 
grave deterioration at the hands of Cinesias, Meles, and other 
“twisters of song” (Aristophanes, Vudes, 333), who through 
their “discordant lawlessness,’’ and their ignorance of ‘ what 
is lawful and just in music, conduct themselves after the man- 
ner of frenzied bacchanals and are overmastered by pleasure, 
... falsely and ignorantly testifying of music that there is 
no intrinsic rightness about it, and that whether it is good or 
bad may be rightly determined only by the degree of pleasure 
which the hearer finds therein.’? — Laws, 700 D-E. 

The flute, in Sparta employed for military purposes, was 
held in Athens as unfit for afreeman’s use. The contortions 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 1$7 


of face, unavoidable in playing upon the instrument, may ac- 
count in great measure for this prejudice, but a more serious 
objection is the declaration of Plato that ““whena man suffers 
the music of the flute, through the ears as if through a funnel, 
to subdue and overcome his soul, . . . he begins to melt and 
waste away, until at last his spirit is melted out of him, and 
the sinews, as it were, of his soul are cut away, and he be- 
comes a feeble warrior indeed.” — Repub. 411, A-B. 

Owing to the exciting effect produced by the music of the 
flute, it was used in such ceremonies as the mystic rites of Bac- 
chus and the Phrygian Cybele, which demanded a religious 
frenzy on the part of the worshippers. In the Crzto, Socrates 
compares himself to the Corybantes, the priests of Cybele, be- 
cause even as the sound of the flutes resounds within them so 
does the echo of the voice of the Laws resound within him- 
self, making him unable to hear aught beside. — Crz#o, 54 E. 


NOTE 56, p. 80. 


The likeness here spoken of between rhetoric and poetry 
was perhaps suggested by the style of Euripides, which was 
more rhetorical than that of his predecessors. But to his style 
only can the comparison apply, for this poet never misses a 
chance of introducing moral instruction, sometimes even to 
the point of weariness. 

Although Plato in more than one instance has shown how 
just is his own appreciation of poetry, he habitually decries its 
use as profitless and even pernicious to the state. “ We our- 
selves,” he asserts, “are, to the extent of our power, poets of 
the best and noblest tragedy; for our whole constitution is an 
imitation of the best and noblest life, and this we declare to 
be the truest tragedy.” — Laws, 817 B. And elsewhere he 
warns us of the danger of giving ourselves up, as we do in 
fiction, to feelings which in our own lives it is our study to 
repress: “ We seldom take into account that in this way we 
get the benefit of other people’s afflictions; for if we foster 
into strength pity for others’ woes it becomes no easy matter 
to hold in check pity for our own woes.” — Repud. 606 B. 


158 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. © 


From the reference to women in this passage, and from the 
statement that in deciding upon the most pleasurable form of 
entertainment, big boys would give the preference to comedy, 
children to puppet shows, and women to tragedy (Laws, 658 D), 
it would seem that women were admitted to at least some of 
the theatrical representations, although Aristophanes, in his 
classification of an Athenian audience (Pax. 50), implies that 
they were excluded from the comedy. 


NOTE 57, p. 81. 


But two of these four statesmen can be said to have proved 
themselves indifferent to the best interests of the citizens: 
MILTIADES, the commander at Marathon, the victory which 
‘“‘ chastened the arrogance of all Asia,” and THEMISTOCLEs, one 
of the generals at Salamis, where the Greeks, it has been said, 
learned not to fear the barbarians at sea, as at Marathon they 
had learned not to fear them on land. The great wealth and 
splendid abilities of Themistocles were unscrupulously used 
in the furtherance of his own selfish ambition, to the utter dis- 
regard of his country’s imminent ruin, and the forces entrusted 
to Miltiades for public defence were diverted to a private en- 
terprise destined to satisfy his greed of gain. Of the two re- 
maining names, CIMON, the son of Miltiades, and, like The- 
mistocles, one of the generals at Salamis, from his lavish acts 
of generosity, such as spreading daily an open table, distribut- 
ing garments to the needy, and removing the walls from his 
garden that all might have free use of it, may have laid him- 
self open to the charge of pandering to the populace, although 
there is no real evidence that he was actuated by any other 
spirit than that of genuine liberality. The accusation against 
PERICLES was of different origin. No love of ostentatious dis- 
play could be attributed to a man whose fortune was as moder- 
ate as his use of it was economical, but on the other hand the 
. innovations sanctioned, if not instituted, by him, — the pay- 
ment of salaries to officers of the state that they might not suf- 
fer pecuniary loss in the fulfilment of public duties, the free 
gift of entrance fees to the theatre, the adornment of Athens, 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 159 


which fostered the love of the beautiful, were doubtless set 
down by the conservative and aristocratic party to which Soc- 
rates belonged as so many specimens of the “ flattering art ” by 
which the people were cajoled into compliance with the ruler’s 
will. And thisto them was signal proof that he was lacking 
in true statesmanship, and hence incapable of fulfilling the _ 
highest duties of his office, even though, in virtue of a certain 
heaven-born instinct or inspiration akin to that of the poet, 
he might have power to guide his own course aright. — Meno, 
99 C-D. 
fo-N Nore 58, p. 81. 

ie The analogy between the body and the soul is frequently 


/ dwelt upon by Plato. True rhetoric he defines as “an art of 


the same kind as medicine. ... for in the one art the essential 
nature of the body, as in the other that of the soul, must be 
thoroughly understood, if, not in a tentative and experimental 


\. manner but scientifically by means of food and medicine, you 
\would implant health and strength in the former, and in the 


latter, by the use of precepts and proper training, that con- 
yiction which it is your object to bring about — even virtue.” 
— Phaedrus, 270 B. 

“To create health,” he furthermore tells us, “is to bring 
the various parts of the body into a natural and reciprocal rela- 
tion of command and obedience ; to create disease is to bring 
them into an unnatural relation of ruling and being ruled. ... 
And so to implant justice is to bring all belonging to the soul 
into the same relation of command and obedience ; to implant 
injustice is to bring them into an unnatural state of ruling and 
being ruled.” — Repub. 444 D. 

And elsewhere he warns us how useless it is to attempt the 
cure of the body without that of the soul, just as the cure of 
the eyes is not to be attempted without the head, nor that of 
the head without the body; “for if the whole be not well, it is 
impossible that the part should be.” — Charmides, 156 E. 


NOTE 59, p. 83. 
This is possibly an allusion to some old superstition that an 


160 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


unfinished myth aroused the anger of the gods. “ Every dis- 
course,” we read in the Phaedrus (264 C), “should be like 
any living creature, having its own proper body, in order that 
it may neither be without head nor without feet, but may 
possess such middle and such extremities as are suited to each 
other and to the whole.” And in the Laws (752 A) the Athe- 
nian exclaims: ‘I should not like to let my story go wander- 
ing about everywhere without a head, for in such condition it 
were an unsightly object indeed.” 


NOTE 60, p. 83. 


EPICHARMUS, born in the island of Cos, about 540 B. C., be- 
came subsequently an inhabitant of Syracuse. Although a 
follower of Pythagoras in philosophy, and also, it is said, a 
student of medicine, his chief fame was derived from his com- 
edies, which were probably the first ever constructed upon a 
regular plan. They were full of sententious maxims, which 
are frequently quoted by Plato. 


NOTE 61, p. 85. 


The words ‘‘ be temperate,”’ and “know thyself,” inscribed 
over the temple at Delphi, must, as Plato elsewhere tells us, 
be intended to imply that temperance is no other than self- 
knowledge. — Charmides, 164 E. 

The virtue of temperance stands for that high self-control 
which brings about a perfect harmony of the whole nature. 
We are told that by virtue of temperance, “all that is lower 
in a man’s nature is subjected to that which is higher,” and 
he becomes in the truest sense “master of himself.” — Ref. 
430 E-431 A. And again: ‘‘The soul is healed by certain 
charms, which charms are noble words; and by these temper- 
ance is implanted in the soul, and when she is once implanted 
and established there, it becomes easy to supply health to the 
head and to the whole body as well.” — Char. 157 A. It is 
perhaps because temperance so well lends itself to Plato’s fa- 
vourite analogy of soul and body, that it stands here for what 
justice represents in the Republic —the harmony of all the fac- 
ulties of the soul. ? | 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 161 


NOTE 62, p. 86. 

With a love of ambiguous expressions, which seems to have 
been inherited from the mystics, the Platonists were wont to 
use in place of the ordinary salutation of “ haz,” or “be of 
good cheer,” that of “ do well,” which is identical with “fare” 
or “de well.” In beginning his third epistle, Plato (or his 
imitator) thus alludes to his fondness for this mode of saluta- 
tion: “In writing to Dionysius to be of good cheer, have I, 
Plato, hit upon the best mode of greeting? Or is not my 
usual one of do wed/ preferable, with which it is my custom 
to greet my friends ?” 


NOTE 63, p. 87. 


The phrase “ never-ending torment” is an allusion like that 
on page 71, to the Danaides and their sieves. A similar idea 
is found in the description of the unphilosophic soul which 
“gives herself up again to pleasures and pains, thus fettering 
herself anew and undertaking a hopeless and futile task ; 
weaving, as it were, the endless web of Penelope, only with a 
contrary design.” — Phaed. 84 A. 


NOTE 64, p. 87. 


The study of arithmetic was forbidden by Lycurgus at 
Sparta, because the computation of numbers was supposed to 
be levelling and democratic in its tendency. Geometry, on the 
other hand, which deals with relative proportions, was encour- 
aged as the embodiment of that conservative principle of order 
which in the system of Empedocles is represented by friend- 
ship and love, while discord and dissension stand for the 
changeful and destructive in the universe. “Let no one who 
is ignorant of geometry enter under my roof ”’ is said to have 
been the inscription which Plato caused to be inscribed over 
the entrance to the Academy. 

This principle of geometrical order and equality, which ‘to 
the greater apportions more, to the inferior less, bestowing 
upon each one that measure which befits him (Laws 757 A- 


162 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


C), is the same which is called by Aristotle ‘“ distributive jus- 
tice” (Vic. Eth. V. 7, p. 1131 b), and which, being recognized 
by the Pythagoreans as the source of “ temperance ” in the 
social state and of harmony in the realm of nature, suggested 
to them the name of Cosmos or order as that most truly de- 
scriptive of the universe. 


NOTE 65, p. 9I. 


This recalls a passage in Xenophon’s A ology (28), where 
Apollodorus exclaims: “‘To me, Socrates, the hardest part is 
to see you suffering death without just cause.” To which 
Socrates, stroking his hair, replied: “ Would you, then, dear- 
est Apollodorus, prefer to see me suffer death for just cause ?”? 

“To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man,” 
says Carlyle, “it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretch- 
edness that he is conscious of virtue, that he feels himself the 
victim not of suffering only, but of injustice.” — Sartor vig 
sartus, chap. vii. 

NoTE 66, p. 92. 

The OBOLE or OBOLUS was equal to about three cents of 
our money. 

NOTE 67, p. 93- 

Compare with Crzto, 47 D-E: ‘“ Would life be worth living 
with a miserable corrupt body ?... or would it be worth living 
if that part of us were corrupt which injustice degrades and 
justice benefits?” And with the Repud. 445 B: “If it is im- 
possible to live when the bodily constitution is corrupted, 
even though we have food and drink of every variety and all 
manner of riches and power, how can it be possible to live 
when the very principle by which we live is corrupted, even 
though we be at liberty to do anything we please, save the 
one thing alone whereby we may escape evil and injustice and 
attain justice and virtue ?” 

“While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the 
servants of corruption, for of whom a man is overcome, of the 
same is he brought in bondage.” — 2 Peer ii. 19. 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 163 


NOTE 68, p. 95. 
“Tt is not mere living which should be valued above every- 
thing else, but living a good life,” were the words of Socrates 
being warned of his approaching end (Crz¢o, 48 B), and his 
last ex tion to his friends was to be “ of good courage and 
await the journey to the world below, ready to set forth when- 
ever the voice of fate shall call.” — Phaed. 115 A. 


NOTE 69, p. 95. 


An allusion to the story that certain witches of Thessaly, 
where the black arts were much practised, took advantage of 
the knowledge bestowed upon them by Hecate, the goddess 
of the moon, and drew that planet down from heaven, for 
which presumption they were punished by the indignant god- 
dess with the loss of their eyes and feet, or, as sometimes in- 
terpreted, of their children. The warning is intended for the 
ambitious, who in the struggle for political dignities too often 
make shipwreck of their own true dignity and manhood. 


NOTE 70, p. 97- 

As the ceramic art was at this time in its perfection at Ath- 
ens, the trade of potter was naturally taken as an illustration 
of manual dexterity; the obvious application being that public 
office, like the fashioning of large wine jars, is not to be 
entered upon, until, by practice upon a more modest scale, the 
necessary ability has been attained. 


NOTE 71, p. 98. 

The Lacedaemonians or Spartans were given this sobri- 
quet on account of the frequent mutilation of their ears result- 
ing from their pugilistic exercises. In the Protagoras (342 
B), certain persons are spoken of as “going about with their 
ears bruised in imitation of the Lacedaemonians.” 

The aristocratic tendencies of Socrates, which led to his be- 
ing accused of an excessive partiality for Sparta, caused him 
to regard it as an experiment noless farcical than it was impru- 


164 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


dent to invest the uneducated masses with either political or 
judicial power. Aristophanes turns the then existing system 
into ridicule, describing how, for the price of three oboli, the 
citizens sit all day long in the courts under the delusion that 
they are conducting public affairs, when in reality they have no 
more power than so many children in leading strings.— Wasps, 
666-695. 

The charge made against Pericles has its foundation in the 
newly instituted custom already mentioned (Note 56), of pay- 
ing the soldiers, judges, and assemblymen that they might not, 
from the suspension of their various callings, suffer loss in 
their fulfilment of public duties. 


NoTE 72, p. 99. 


In the second year of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians, 
decimated by the plague and crippled by reverses, accused 
Pericles, their general in chief, of having brought these evils 
upon them. That there was any question of his being con- 
demned to death is probably an exaggeration, although he was 
certainly not reélected general, and was sentenced to pay a 
heavy fine. The sentence, however, was shortly afterwards 
revoked, and Pericles was reinstated, with a formal expression 
of regret for the injustice done him. 

The passage which follows is almost identical with one in 
the AZemorabilia, where Socrates, in speaking of the evil in- 
fluence exerted by the thirty tyrants, remarks that “ it were 
an amazing thing if a man who had caused the herd of which 
he was keeper to deteriorate and become worse oxen did not 
acknowledge himself to be a bad oxherd; but still more amaz- 
ing if a man who, acting as overseer of a city, had caused the 
citizens to deteriorate and become worse men, did not feel 
shame and regard himself as a bad overseer of the city.” — 
XEN. Mem. I. 2, 32. 


NOTE 73, p. 100. 


Although these words are not a direct quotation, their sense 
is expressed in two passages in the Odyssey : — 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 165 


‘What men are here — wild, savage, and unjust, 
Or hospitable, and who hold the gods 
In reverence?” 
— Vi., 120. 
“ Whether ill-mannered, savage, and unjust, 
Or kind to guests and reverent towards the gods.” 
—ix.,175. [Bryant’s translation. 


NOTE 74, p. 100. 


Ostracism, so called from the tile (8crpaxov) on which the 
name of the person to be condemned was written, seems to 
have been regarded less as a punishment than as a preventive 
measure for averting future danger and possible bloodshed to 
the state, by the precautionary removal of some citizen whose 
wealth or position might enable him to usurp an undue share 
of power. This measure to be carried into effect required 
first the consent of the people in a regular assembly, after 
which a public meeting was convened in the agora, when each 
voter wrote upon atile the name of the citizen he wished to 
have removed. Whoever received the largest number of 
votes, provided the number was not under six thousand, was 
compelled to leave Attica for a period of ten years, though he 
might be recalled at any time by a vote of the people, as in the 
case of Cimon, who was recalled at the instance of his rival, 
Pericles. 

Banishment was a much severer punishment, and attended 
with disgrace, but the property of the condemned was not 
necessarily confiscated, and even when the offence had been 
murder, the ban was sometimes removed on payment of a 
penalty. 

The “ pit ” was a “ place like a well,” said to have hooks or 
spikes in the sides and at the bottom, into which condemned 
criminals were thrown, in earlier days probably while yet alive, 
but in later times only after death. 

Although it is only from a one-sided point of view that the 
three men here mentioned can be classed in the same cate- 
gory, advantage is taken of a certain similarity of outward 
circumstance to name them collectively as examples of bad 


166 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


management no less than of bad statesmanship. For they had 
failed not only to raise the moral character of the citizens but 
also to secure their own chief aim—the approval and confi- 
dence of those whom they sought to flatter; and thus, while 
forfeiting the approval of their own conscience, they shared 
equally with the honest man all the penalties of unpopularity. 


NOTE 75, p. 103. 


THEARION is mentioned by more than one of the comic 
poets as the fashionable baker of Athens. 

MITHAECUs of Sicily, a country which in culinary matters 
was to Greece what France is to the rest of Europe, was said 
to be as great a cook as Phidias was a sculptor, and was much 
appreciated in all the Greek cities, with the exception of 
Sparta, where it was a point of discipline to discourage his 
profession. To him is attributed the honour of having writ- 
ten the first cookery book ever made. 

The skill of SARAMBUS in mixing wines, an important part 
of the office of wine-seller, was, according to a comic poet 
(Posipippus, /7. /nc. iii.), one of Plataea’s few boasts. 


NOTE 76, p. 104. 


The blame of Athens’ decline was laid in great part upon 
ALCIBIADES, by whose advice the ill-fated Sicilian expedition 
had been undertaken. 


NOTE 77, p. 107. 


The MyYsIANs, a people of Asia Minor, were, together with 
the Carians, regarded as so inferior a race that their name was 
used as an epithet of lowest opprobrium. 


NOTE 78, p. IIo. 


From the Apclogy of Socrates we learn that the charges 
which he is here supposed to foretell were not wholly unpro- 
voked. His simile of the gadfly(A/. 30 E) is no inapt repre- 
sentation of the manner in which his searching and persistent 
investigation mnst have acted upon the superficial hearer, to 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 167 


whom doubtless it appeared that “like the torpedo fish... 
which torpifies all who come within its touch,” he did “ noth- 
ing but bewilder himself and other people ” (AZeno, 80 A), and 
was “a most eccentric creature, who drove men to their wits? 
end.” — Theactetus, 149 A. 

They, on the other hand, who yielded themselves to him 
“as toa physician,” failed not to learn that by this process 
of cross examination the mind, being purged of all prejudices 
and preconceived notions (Soph. 230 D), was for the first time 
opened to receive the truth. 


NOTE 79, p. III. 


“ The hard thing,” so Socrates addresses his judges after 
he has received sentence of condemnation, “is to escape not 
death but evil, for that runs faster than death. — AZ. 39 A. 

‘‘ Strange were it,” he says again, “if through fear of death 
or any other evil, I were to desert my post.... For no one 
knows what death is, or whether it may not be the greatest of 
all goods to men .. . but that it is wicked and disgraceful to 
do injustice, and to disobey a superior, whether God or man, 
this Ido know. Those evils, therefore, which I know to be 
evils, not those things which for aught I know may be bless- 
ings, will I fear and flee from.” — AZ. 29 C. 

But more triumphant is the strain where Socrates welcomes 
death, the ‘‘ best friend of man” (Laws, 828 D), even as do 
the swans, who “ when they perceive that death is near sing 
much more fully and freely than they have sung all their life 
before out of joy that they are about to go and dwell with the 
god whose servants they are .. . and, because they can look 
into the unseen world, rejoice on that day more than upon 
any other day of their life.” — Phaed. 85 A, B. 


NOTE 8o, p. III. 


The passage is from the //zad (15, 187 fol.), where Posei- 
don says : — 


“ We were three brothers, all of Rhaea born 
To Saturn ; Jove and I, and Pluto third 


168 NOTES ON THE. GORGIAS. 


Who o’er the nether regions holds his sway. 
Threefold was our partition; each obtained 
His meed of honours due; the hoary Sea 
By lot my habitation was assigned ; 
The realms of Darkness fell to Pluto’s share; 
Broad Heaven amid the sky and clouds to Jove, 
But Earth and high Olympus are to all 
A common heritage.” 
— [Lord Derby’s translation. 


The Happy or BLESSED ISLEs are the same as the Elysian 
Fields, which Homer places on the western border of the 
earth, “where the sun goes down,” while Hesiod speaks of 
them as in the ocean, and later poets again as underneath the 
earth. Inthe time of Homer these islands were believed to 
be the abode only of favoured heroes, who were transported 
thither without dying, but at this period they were thought of 
as inhabited by all good men after death. In the same way, 
Tartarus, originally supposed to be the prison-house of the 
Titans only, had come to be regarded.as the place of punish- 
ment for all mortals. 


NOTE 81, p. 112. 


PROMETHEUS, having endowed men with the gift of fore- 
knowledge, had also power to take it away and substitute for 
it hope. In the words of Aischylus : — 

Prom. ‘*T made men cease from contemplating death.” 

Chorus. ‘** What medicine didst thou find for that disease?” 

Prom. “ Blind hopes I gave to live and dwell with them.” 

— Prometheus, vv. 247 seq. [Plumptre’s translation. 


NoTE 82, p. 113. 


At this day only two continents, EUROPE and AsIA, were 
recognised. Minos and RHADAMANTHUS, the representatives 
of Asia, were born in Crete, whence it must be inferred that this 
island was regarded as belonging not to Europe but to Asia. 
Minos, the fabled king and law-giver of Crete, who exacted 
from Athens the yearly sacrifice to the Minotaur of fourteen 
youths and maidens, is thus spoken of in the Odyssey :— 


“ Then I beheld the illustrious son of Zeus, 
Minos, a golden sceptre in his hand, 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 169 


Sitting to judge the dead who round the king 
Pleaded their cause.” 
— Od. xi., 707. [Bryant’s translation. 
_ The “meadow at the three cross-roads ” recalls — 
“ the fields of asphodel where dwelt 
The souls, the bodiless forms of those who die.” 
— Od. xxiv., 13. 
In popular superstition the meeting of three cross-roads 
was held to be peculiarly favourable for communication with 
the nether world. 


NOTE 83, p. 113. 


“For is not dying to have the soul and body released one 
from the other, so that each exists by itself? Is death anything 
else than this ?” — Phaed. 64 C. 


NOTE 84, p. 113. 


To be closely cropped was regarded in Athens as a badge 
of slavery, while flowing hair on the other hand was worn only 
by fops. It was customary for boys to wear their hair long 
until they were admitted to the rights of citizenship, when it 
was cut off and dedicated to some deity, generally a river god, 
although a visit was sometimes made to Delphi for the express 
object of consecrating this as an offering to Apollo. Upon 
reaching manhood, they allowed their hair to grow again. 
Thucydides (1, 6) speaks of the golden clasps, in the shape of 
grasshoppers, wherewith the Athenians, in the old times before 
the Persian wars, were accustomed to fasten their hair in a 
knot at the top or back of the head. 


NoTE 85, p. I14. 


“Happy he,”’. Carlyle exclaims, “ who can look through the 
clothes of a man into the man himself and discern if may be 
in this or the other dread potentate, a more or less incompe- 
tent digestive apparatus ; yet also an inscrutable mystery in 
the meanest tinker that sees with eyes!” — Sartor Resartus, 
Book 1, chap. ix. 


170 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


NOTE 86, p. II5. 


The early Fathers of the Church held the teachings of the 

divine Plato in scarcely less reverence than those of the in- 

" spired writers, and it is very probable that the theological con- 
ception of Purgatory, so foreign to Hebrew thought, was 
evolved from the description of the intermediate state con- 
tained in this myth and in similar passages. 

According to the view of Socrates that evil is committed 
through want of understanding, punishment was regarded by 
him not as retributive, but as corrective, if not to the sinner 
himself at least to his fellow-men. “A man is not punished 
on account of his having sinned, for what has been done can 

‘never be undone, but in order that in the time to come he and 
all who behold him may perfectly hate injustice, or desist in 
great measure from the practice of it.” — Laws, 934 A. 


NOTE 87, p. 116. 


In the myth descriptive of the after life, contained in the 
tenth book of the Republic, we read that of the hopelessly lost 
“the greater part had been in life despots,” and accordingly 
chief among the group figures Ardiaeus, the tyrant king of 
Pamphylia.— Repud. 615 E. So Fra Angelico and other me- 
dizval painters, in their pictures of the Last Judgment, were 
wont to place kings and potentates in the foremost rank of 
those condemned to eternal punishment. 

Plato maintained also that great natural endowments are 
fraught with scarcely less danger to their owner than is high 
position. “Do not the greatest crimes,” he exclaims, “ and 
depravity the most unalloyed, proceed, not from a worthless 
nature, but rather from the exuberance of one which its train- 
ing has spoiled; and is it not true that a weak nature is capable 
neither of great good nor of great evil?” — Repud. 4g1 E. 


NOTE 88, p. 116. 


TANTALUS, the ancestor of the race of Pelops and supposed 
to have been a king of Phrygia, was, in punishment for having 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 171 


divulged a secret of the gods, condemned to suffer the ex- 
tremes of hunger and thirst, while powerless to reach the water | 
and food by which he was surrounded. 
‘¢ And next I looked on Tantalus, a prey 

To grievous torments, standing in a lake 

That reached his chin. Though painfully athirst, 

He could not drink ; as often as he bowed 

His aged head to take into his lips 

The water, it was drawn away, and sank 

Into the earth, and the dark soil appeared 

Around his feet ; a god had dried it up.” 

— Od. xi., 582. 


SisyPHus, the reputed founder of Corinth, was sentenced, 
_ for his deceit and avarice, to roll forever up hill a huge marble 
block, which had no sooner reached the top than it rolled down 
again. E 
“ Then I beheld the shade of Sisyphus 
Amid his sufferings. With both hands he rolled 
A huge stone up a hill. To force it up 
He leaned against the mass with hands and feet ; 
But, ere it crossed the summit of the hill, 
A power was felt that sent it rolling back, 
And downward plunged the unmanageable rock 
Before him to the plain. Again he toiled 
To heave it upward, while the sweat in streams 
Ran down his limbs, and dust begrimed his brow.” 
— Od. xi., 593. 


The giant Tityus was sent to Tartarus in punishment for 
an offence against Leto (Latona). 
“ And Tityus there I saw, — the mighty earth 
His mother, overspreading, as he lay, 
Nine acres, with two vultures at his side, 
That, plucking at his liver, plunged their beaks 
Into the flesh; nor did his hands avail 
To drive them off.” 
— Od. xi., 576. [Bryant’s translation, 


In the second book of the //ad we read of the council of 
war where THERSITES, the “ugliest man who came to Troy,” 
meets with condign punishment at the hands of Odysseus for 
his craven advice to abandon the siege. 


172 NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 


: NOTE 89, p. 117. 

The omission of ARISTIDES the Just from the list of those 
whose statesmanship was commended by Callicles is in itself a 
proof of his absolute freedom from selfish ambition. He it 
was who before the battle of Marathon persuaded the gen- 
erals, his colleagues, to relinquish each his day of command to 
Miltiades, by which sacrifice success was insured. When his 
advice was asked concerning the proposal of Themistocles to 
set fire to the fleet of the Greek allies and thus secure to 
Athens the sovereignty of the sea, he declared to the people 
that nothing could be more advantageous but nothing more 
unjust, and thus shamed them into abandoning the scheme... 
Ostracised through the intrigues of his rival, Themistocles, 
his integrity and disinterestedness were soon found to be in- 
dispensable to the state, and he was recalled to take an active 
part in the Persian war. So faithful and devoted was he in 
the discharge of all the public trusts committed to him that 
his private interests were neglected, and such was his poverty 
that at his death he was buried at public cost. 


NOTE 90, p. II7. 
“ Then I beheld the illustrious son of Zeus, 
Minos, a golden sceptre in his hand, 
Sitting to judge the dead, who round the king 
Pleaded their causes.” 
— Od. ix., 568-570. 
A passage in Homer (//iad, ii. 101 fol.), which recounts the 
descent of this badge of office in unbroken line from the an- 
cestors of Agamemnon, one of the sceptred kings, shows 
that it was handed down from father to son as the outward 
symbol of royalty as it was also of authority, whether vested 
in king, judge, herald, seer, or priest. 


NOTE QI, p. 118. 


Here Socrates turns the tables upon Callicles, by repeating 
for his benefit the same warning which the latter had pre- 
viously addressed to him (pages 58, 59). 


NOTES ON THE GORGIAS. 173 


There is a similar passage in Theactetus, where the philos- 
opher who, quite unused to “refuting in rhetorical fashion” 
(Gorg. 471 E), has heretofore cut a sorry figure in the law 
courts, confronts the lawyer with weighty questions concerning 
justice and injustice, happiness and misery, and how these may 
be gained or avoided. And then, we are told, it is the turn of 
the “sharp little pettifogging mind” to become “dizzy and 
sore bewildered and dismayed,” and to “stammer out broken 
words” and make himself an object of ridicule in the eyes of 
all “ who have not the spirit of a slave.” — Theact. 175 D. 


NOTE 92, p. I19. 


An allusion to line 592 in A‘schylus’s tragedy of the Seven 
against Thebes, which runs thus: ‘ Best to de not seem he 
makes his life’s pursuit.’”’ As proof of the estimation in which 
Aristides was held, the story is told that on the first represen- 
tation of the play, the substitution of just for dest in this line 
was the signal for every eye to be turned upon “ Aristides the 
Just.” 


= 


NOTES ON THE REPUBLIC. 


NOTE 93, p. 122. 


We may suppose this screen to have been a sort of bench 
which hid from the audience the contrivances necessary for 
tricks of legerdemain, or it may be that the “jugglers” were 
marionette players who, like the modern showman in Punch 
and Judy, moved their puppets from behind the screen where 
they were themselves concealed. 


NOTE 94, p. 126. 


These words are taken from the account given by Odysseus 
of his descent into Hades, where the ghost of Achilles says : — 


“T would be 
A labourer on earth, and serve for hire 
Some man of mean estate who makes scant cheer 
Rather than reign o’er all who have gone down 
To death.” 
— Od. xi. 489-90. [Bryant’s translation. 


NOTE 95, p. 127. 


This refers to the passage in the preceding book, where the 
‘sun is called the lord of light and the soul is compared to the 
eye. “ When it is stayed upon that on which truth and being 
shine, it thinks and apprehends and beams with intelligence ; 
but when it is turned to the darkness, it is dim-sighted and 
conjectures only, and changes its mind backwards and for- 
wards, and is like to one in whom there is no intelligence.”” — 
Repub. 508 D. 

NOTE 96, p. 128. 


We are reminded here of Callicles’s description of the dazed 
appearance which Socrates would present in a court of law, 


NOTES ON THE REPUBLIC. 175 


and of Socrates’s own account of what would be his experi- 
ence if brought before a court of little boys on a charge pre- 
ferred by a pastry cook. — Gorgias, 486 B; 521 E; see also 
Note gl. 


NOTE 97, p. 129. 


O men forever striving, but in vain, 
Why is it that a thousand arts you teach, 
But one nor know nor even seek to know, — 
To make him think in whom there is no mind! 
— EuriPives, Hiffpolytus, 916 seqq. 


NOTE 98, p- 130. 


In the tenth book of the Refudizc Glaucon is bidden con- 
template the human soul, not as she is now, corrupted through 
contact with the body, but such as she might become if she 
were “brought safely out of the sea wherein at the present 
she lies sunk, having shaken off the shells and pebbles, wild 
masses of earthy and stony substance, which, by reason of her 
enjoyment upon earth of the so-called good things of life, 
cling close about her.” — Repub. 611 E. 


NOTE 99, Pp. 133: , 

Compare Crito (50-2), where the Laws, after enumerating all 
the benefits that Socrates has received from them since his 
birth, exhort him not to break the covenant which, by volun- 
tarily accepting their guardianship, he made with them to per- 
form whatever. they might command. 

The abstinence fromthe turmoil of public life which Soc- 
rates elsewhere enjoins upon the philosopher may seem in 
direct contradiction with these exhortations to the “ best en- 
dowed natures ” to take part in it, just as the admonitions of 
that “divine voice” which always stands in the way of his 
having anything to do with public affairs (A4fo/. 31 E), may 
appear to gainsay the declaration, expressed almost in the 
same breath, that he is continually busying himself with the 
affairs of other men. — AZo/. 31 B. 

But the two are in reality not at variance ; for although it is 


176 NOTES ON THE REPUBLIC. 


right that the philosophic soul, renouncing worldly honours and 
withdrawing herself from all that appertains to the body, should 
in a certain sense dwell apart in the calm which she has pre- 
pared for herself (Phaed. 84 A), none the less does the true 
philosopher, even though not himself engaging in public af- 
fairs, make it his study to render others capable of engaging in 
them (XEN. Jem. I. 6, 15), reflecting that he whose training 
has best fitted him to do this service to the State is “as under 
stress of necessity ” to fulfil it. 


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by authors selected by the editor on account of some especial 
qualifications for a portrayal of the period they respectively 
describe. The volumes form an excellent collection, especially 
adapted to the wants of a general reader.”,—-CHARLES KENDALL 
ADAMS, President of Cornell University. 


**The ‘Epochs of History’ seem to me to have been prepared with 
knowledge and artistic skill to meet the wants of a large number 
of readers. To the young they furnish an outline or compen- 
dium which may serve as an introduction to more extended 
study. To those who are older they present a convenient sketch 
of the heads of the knowledge which they have already acquired. 
The outlines are by no means destitute of spirit, and may be 
used with great profit for family reading, and in select classes 
or reading clubs.”—NOAH PORTER, President of Yale College. 


**It appears to me that the idea of Morris in his Epochs is strictly 
in harmony with the philosophy of history—namely, that 
great movements should be treated not according to narrow 
geographical and national limits and distinction, but uni- 
versally, according to their place in the general life of the 
world. The historical Maps and the copious Indices are 
welcome additions to the volumes.”—Bishop JOHN F. HURST, 
£x-President of Drew Theological Seminary. 


**The volumes contain the ripe results of the studies of men who 
are authorities in their respective fields.”— Zhe Nation. 


**To be appreciated they must be read in their entirety; and we 
do no more than simple justice in commending them earnestly 
to the favor of the studious public.’"—Zhe New York World. 


The great success of the series is the best proof of its general 
popularity, and the excellence of the various volumes is further 
attested by their having been adopted as text-books in many of 
our leading educational institutions, including Harvard, Cornell, 
Wesleyan, Vermont, and Syracuse Universities ; Yale, Princeton, 
Amherst, Dartmouth, Williams, Union, and Smith Colleges; and 
many other colleges, academies, normal and high schools. 


A Translation of the Apology, Crito, and parts 

SOCRATES " of the Phedo of Plato, containing the Defence of 
" Socrates at his Trial, his Conversations in Prison, 

with his Thoughts on the Future Life, and an Account of his Death. 


With an Introduction by Professor W, W. Goopwin, of Harvard College. 
12mo, cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents, 


Translations 


A Day iN Araens Wit SOcRATES: t="; 


" tagoras 
the Republic of Plato, Being conversations between Socrates and other 
Greeks on Virtue and Justice. 12mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. 


These exquisite translations, by an unknown hand, of some of Plato’s immortal 
masterpieces have been pronounced by those best qualified to judge, to be the best 
English versions that have ever been made of the dialogues and speculations of the 
greatest philosopher of all times in a form for popular reading. 

The first of the volumes is intended to present the personal character and moral 
pce of Socrates, together with Plato’s own speculations. The companion volume 

as for its object to give a vivid picture, not so much of Plato’s philosophy as of the 
distinctive characteristics of the age in which he lived, and to enable the reader to enter 
into the every-day scenes of Athenian life, and to become, as it were, an actual participa 


. tor in the action. - F 
These books are especially to be commended for the use of school libraries and 
reading circles. No better examples exist of the popularization of high class literature 


that is a feature of our times. 


THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO 


Translated into English, with Analysis and Introduéctions 
By B. JOWETT, M.A. 


MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK 
A new and cheaper edition, Four vols., crown 8vo, $8.00 per set, 
in cloth 


From the NEW YORK TRIBUNE, 


«The present work of Professor Jowett will be welcomed with profound interest, as 
the only adequate endeavor to transport the most precious monument of Grecian thought 
among the familiar treasures of English literature. The noble reputation of Professor 
Eg both as a thinker and a scholar, it may be premised, however, is a valid guaranty 

or the excellence of his performance. He is known as one of the most hard-working 
students of the English universities, in the departments of philology and criticism, whose 
exemplary diligence is fully equalled by his singular acuteness of penetration, his clear 
and temperate judgment, and his rare and absolute fidelity to the interests of truth.” 


PLATO’S BEST THOUGHTS 


As compiled from Professor Jowett’s Translation of the 
Dialogues of Plato 


By REV. C. H. A. BULKLEY 
A new edition. One vol., crown 8vo, price reduced to $1.50 


From THE EVANGELIST. , 


**This volume makes the best things in Plato accessible and available and its index 
gives it the character of a dictionary.” 


MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY 


For the Use of Schools, Art Students, and General ‘Readers 


FOUNDED ON THE WORKS OF PETISCUS, PRELLER, AND 
WELCKER 


By ALEXANDER S. MURRAY 
DEPARTMENT OF GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITIES, BRITISH MUSEUM 


With 45 Plates on tinted paper, representing more than 90 Mythological Subjects. 
Reprinted from the Second Revised London Edition 


One vol., crown 8vo, . . ; ; 4 ; ; ; $2.25 


There was long needed a compact, manageable Manual of Mythology, which should 
be a guide to the Art student and the general reader, and at the same time answer the 
urposes of a school text-book. This volume which was prepared by the Director of the 
Pienartaent of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, upon the basis of 
the works of Petiscus, Preller, and Welcker, had so extensive a sale in the English edi- 
tion, as to prove that it precisely supplied this want. This American edition is reprinted 
from the latest English edition, and contains all the illustrations of the latter, while the 
chapter eee Eastern Mythology has been carefully revised by Prof. W. D. Whitney, 
of Yale College. 


THE HISTORY OF ROME 


From the Earliest Time to the Feriod of its ‘Decline 


By DR. THEODOR MOMMSEN 


Translated, with the author’s sanction and additions, by the Rev. W. P. DICKSON, 
Regius Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of Glasgow, late Classical 
Examiner of the University of St. Andrews. With an Introduction by Dr. 
LEONHARD SCHMITZ, and a copious Index of the whole four volumes, prepared 
especially for this edition. 

REPRINTED FROM THE REVISED LONDON EDITION 
Four vols., crown 8vo, gilt top, price per set, . ‘ ‘ $8.00 


“A work of the very highest merit ; its learning is exact and profound; its narrative 
full of genius and skill; its descriptions of men are admirably vivid. We wish to place 
on record our opinion that Dr. Mommsen’s is by far the best history of the Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Commonwealth.”—Loudon Times. 


“THE HISTORY: OP GREECE 


By PROF. DR. ERNST CURTIUS 


Translated by ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD, M.A., Fellow of St. Peter’s College, 
Cambridge, Prof. of History in Owen’s College, Manchester. 


UNIFORM WITH MOMMSEN’'S HISTORY. OF ROME 
Five vols., crown 8vo, gilt top, price per set, 4 ° $10.00 


‘‘We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius’s book better than by saying that it 
may be fitly ranked with Theodor Mommsen’s great work.”—London Spectator. 

‘*The History of Greece is treated by Dr. Curtius so broadly and freely in the spirit 
of the nineteenth century, that it becomes in his hands one of the worthiest and most 
instructive branches of study for all who desire something more than a knowlege of 
isolated facts for their education. This translation ought to become a regular part of 
the accepted course of reading for young men at college, and for all who are in training 
for the free political life of our country..—N. Y. £vening Post. 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, PUBLISHERS, 
743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 


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